Thursday, June 30, 2016


Shorten does a complete backflip on homosexual marriage issue

Bill Shorten told religious leaders and Christian voters in the final days of the 2013 election campaign that he was "completely relaxed about having some form of plebiscite" on same-sex marriage.

In video footage ­obtained by The Australian, the ­Opposition Leader outlined a position that is in stark contrast to his claims ­yesterday that a plebiscite would be a taxpayer-funded platform to give a "green light" to ­homophobia and hate.

Mr Shorten told the Australian Christian Lobby forum in his electorate that he preferred "the Australian people make their view known" to the 150 MPs in federal parliament. "Personally speaking, I’m completely relaxed about having some form of plebiscite," he said. "I’d be wary of trying to use a referendum and a constitutional mechanism to start tampering with the Marriage Act.

"But in terms of a plebiscite — I would rather the people of Aust­ralia could make their view clear on this than leaving this issue to 150 people."

He told the Christian forum, which was webcast, he supported same-sex marriage and did not support a referendum but he did not think parliament would act.

Mr Shorten said "gay marriage" was not the reason he ran for parliament and that "I would rather that I didn’t have to address the question". He said he preferred a vote in parliament but he could not see it voting for change for a long time. "I believe that you should allow the parliament, if that’s what has to happen, to make a determination on this question," he said.

He then explained that he was relaxed about a plebiscite.

Mr Shorten, the then education minister in the Rudd government, made his comments in his Melbourne seat of Maribyrnong at the Essendon Baptist church in the final week of the 2013 election campaign. Last night he told The Australian he had changed his mind on a same-sex marriage plebiscite since the last election.

In recent days, as he faces increasing pressure on economic plans and budget costings, Mr Shorten has turned opposition to the Coalition plan for a plebiscite on same-sex marriage into a key priority along with his Medicare scare campaign.

Mr Shorten used his final election address to the National Press Club yesterday to pledge Labor’s first act would be to introduce a same-sex marriage bill into parliament and accused Malcolm Turnbull of settling for a "second-best option" of a plebiscite because of a "grubby deal with the right wing of the Liberal Party". He repeated his attack that the proposal for a same-sex marriage plebiscite would be a "taxpayer-funded ­platform for homophobia" and ­refused to say if Labor in opposition would pass the proposal through the Senate.

He also used the plebiscite commitment — made by Tony Abbott as prime minister and adopted by Mr Turnbull — to accuse Mr Turnbull of weakness and allowing a "green light" for homophobia and hate. "Why on earth can’t the Liberal Party just let their politicians do their day job rather than (spending) $160 million (on a plebiscite) to make up for Mr Turnbull’s deal to become the leader of the Liberal Party," he said. "Mr Turnbull knows that he’s come up with the second-best ­option. He knows if he had his way, if he was genuinely leading the Liberal Party, if he was actually the man in charge rather than simply the guy who is the front for the Liberal Party, then he would go for a vote in parliament."

Mr Shorten said last night he had changed his mind because of the experience overseas, particularly in Ireland, where "hateful" campaigns had been run.

"Over the last few years, I’ve seen harmful advertising campaigns run off the back of plebiscites and referendums overseas — I can’t ignore that," he said.

"The Irish experience convinced me that a plebiscite is the wrong way to go over here. The debate has moved on since 2013 — there’s no doubt whatsoever Australians now overwhelmingly support marriage equality, we don’t need a plebiscite to tell us that. As leader, I’ve learned how significant this issue is for so many Australians. Malcolm Turnbull thinks so too, he’s said as much. It’s just he’s not prepared to do anything about it," he said.

At the ALP national conference last year the left wing of the Labor Party agreed to change the policy on offshore processing of asylum-seekers and consider boat turnbacks in return for right-wing support for same-sex marriage.

Mr Shorten pledged yesterday: "The first piece of legislation I introduce into the 45th parliament will be a bill to amend the Marriage Act. I promise Australians that if and when we’re elected, within the first 100 days we will legislate for marriage equality, it will be a conscience vote and it will happen. No $160m plebiscite, no hurtful, hateful government-sponsored advertising campaign for us."

Mr Shorten said there would be "civil war" in the Liberal Party over the plebiscite if the Coalition were re-elected and Mr Turnbull could not convince his cabinet ministers to abide by the plebiscite decision. Scott Morrison, who is opposed to same-sex marriage said he supported a plebiscite and would accept the national result.

SOURCE





Thuggery from members of Victoria's extremist firemen's union

THREE firefighters have ­allegedly threatened to tear down a sign supporting the CFA and calling for voters to "Put Labor Last" in an intimidating move just days out from the federal election.

The officers, wearing station uniform, barged into a poultry business in Dandenong on Monday and the owner says they demanded the business remove the sign.

The owner, who speaks little English, was left frightened and directed the fireys to a nearby garage, saying its owner had organised the sign.

Security footage obtained by the Herald Sun shows the trio enter the workshop at 2.47pm where they confront the owner, allegedly demanding to know how he votes and reminding him "who puts your fires out".

The owner said he had helped secure the space for the 2m x 4m sign but that it wasn’t his sign to remove.

"It was pretty clear what they wanted," the businessman, who did not want to be named, said. "They said, ‘you take it down or we will’."

When he tried to take a photograph of one of the firefighters on his phone, he said the man tried to snatch it.

"I couldn’t believe it. They came in all nice and sweet but that quickly changed," he said. "It just came out of the blue."

SOURCE





Greens self-serving Trots: ex-PM Keating

Keating is right about that. The Greens are full of ex-Trotskyites

Former prime minister Paul Keating has used a Labor rally to turn his caustic wit on the Greens Party, labelling it "a bunch of opportunists and Trots" splitting the progressive vote.

In his first public address of the 2016 election campaign, Mr Keating told the Sydney crowd the Greens were reducing Labor's ability to form government.

"They're a protest party, not a party of government, but their game is to nobble the party of government that can actually make changes," Mr Keating said.

"You can't be a government when you've got a bunch tearing away at you, trying to pinch a seat here and there, all to make themselves look important."

Mr Keating addressed the rally in aid of fellow Labor stalwart Anthony Albanese, who is under pressure in his inner-western Sydney seat of Grayndler.

The seat has come under sustained Greens attack after AEC redistributions cut the traditional working-class stronghold of Marrickville, as well as Mr Albanese's home and office, from the electorate.

He is facing Greens candidate Jim Casey, a former firefighter and Fire Brigade Employees' Union secretary.

Mr Albanese, who labelled Mr Keating "Australia's greatest treasurer", said the Greens were taking the public funding from every NSW seat solely to attack him.

"They're outspending us two to one in this seat. There's billboards everywhere," Mr Albanese said.

Mr Keating castigated the Greens for positioning themselves as the true Australian progressive party, saying it was Labor who introduced legislation to protect the Daintree, Jervis Bay and Antarctica.

The Greens had also failed the environment by blocking Labor's emissions trading scheme (ETS) in 2009.

"They purloined the name Greens. We're more green than they are," he said. "Ratting on Rudd with the ETS scheme and walking away from the Malaysia Solution, things that required a bit of courage ... they could've been the Yellows."

Turning to the economy, Mr Keating said leaving the economic lifting to central banks through monetary policy had become increasingly ineffective.

He said the onus now fell on governments to intervene with infrastructure spending and public service provision.

"Governments have tucked themselves away and let central banks lower interest rates in the hope, like lighting a match, if you strike it enough there might be a flame," Mr Keating said.

"The market system which I participated in as treasurer, where we opened the economy up, we basically reduced the size of government to let all these forces go.

"We're now at a point in economic history in Australia and around the world where that system is going nowhere."

Mr Keating's appearance comes just a day after criticising the government's proposed company tax cuts in a letter to the Australian Financial Review.

SOURCE





Andrew Bolt's book triggers staff. Bookshops now safe spaces, it seems

Disappointing, but not at all surprising, that some Australian bookshops are making Andrew Bolt's new book hard to find for customers. The purported reason is that it offends some of the poor snowflakes working there. I'm sure that's true in a lot of cases. There are many students and young 'uns employed in these shops, after all. They have grown up being fed PC BS, and accept it as gospel. They see Bolta as the quintessence of eeevil.

But I think it might also be partially a top down directive. Booksellers often have cozy relationships with the big international publishers after all. And Worth Fighting For is published by Wilkinson Publishing. They've been around a while but they seem to be a local outfit. Maybe there's a desire to not be seen as rocking the boat by pushing an independent's product?

The reason I say this is that the traditional offline book business is being eaten alive by Amazon and other online booksellers. So the big publishing houses are feeling very anxious and threatened. Also, Bolt himself cites the case of global warming skeptic Ian Plimer, who had all kinds of retail related trouble with his books. As well as being politically incorrect, they were published by Connor Court, another small, independent outfit.

But in the end I think it's probably the ideological aspect that has most to do with this stealth campaign to sabotage Bolta's sales. And it's certainly not a new phenomenon. Way back in the nineties I remember hearing about a Paul Sheehan book called Among the Barbarians. It caused controversy at the time, and for many of the same reasons Bolt does now. I didn't have any trouble finding it in the St Kilda bookstore I bought it from. But I will always remember the disgusted reaction from the guy behind the counter!

So typical of sneering hipsters. But so silly! I mean, it's a business. They're shooting themselves in the foot by acting like this.

SOURCE





Greenies determined to hamstring Northern development

The opportunities for viable development in Australia's "empty North" are few but Greenies still want to block them all.  They will find some frog or insect that would be inconvenienced by development projects and thus stop everything

Ahead of the election, the major parties have released different visions for developing northern Australia. The Coalition has committed to dam projects across Queensland; Labor has pledged to support the tourism industry.

These pledges build on the Coalition’s A$5 billion Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility, a fund to support large projects, starting on July 1.

The Coalition has pledged A$20 million to support 14 new or existing dams across Queensland should the government be returned to power, as part of a A$2.5 billion plan for dams across northern Australia.

Labor, meanwhile, will redirect A$1 billion from the fund towards tourism, including eco-tourism, indigenous tourism ventures and transport infrastructure (airports, trains, and ports).

It is well recognised that the development of northern Australia will depend on harnessing the north’s abundant water resources. However, it’s also well recognised that the ongoing use of water resources to support industry and agriculture hinges on the health and sustainability of those water resources.

Northern Australia is home to diverse ecosystems, which support a range of ecosystem services and cultural values, and these must be adequately considered in the planning stages.
Sustainability comes second

The white paper for northern Australia focuses almost solely on driving growth and development. Current water resource management policy in Australia, however, emphasises integrated water resource planning and sustainable water use that protects key ecosystem functions.

Our concern is that the commitment to sustainability embedded in the National Water Initiative (NWI), as well as Queensland’s water policies, may become secondary in the rush to "fast track" these water infrastructure projects.

Lessons from the past show that the long-term success of large water infrastructure projects requires due process, including time for consultation, environmental assessments and investigation of alternative solutions.
What is on the table?

The Coalition proposes providing funds to investigate the feasibility of a range of projects, including upgrading existing dams and investigating new dams. The majority of these appear to be focused on increasing the reliability of water supplies in regional urban centres. Few target improved agricultural productivity.

These commitments add to the already proposed feasibility study (A$10 million) of the Ord irrigation scheme in the Northern Territory and the construction of the Nullinga Dam in Queensland. And the A$15 million northern Australia water resources assessment being undertaken by CSIRO, which is focused on the Fitzroy river basin in Western Australia, the Darwin river basins in Northern Territory and the Mitchell river basin in Queensland.

Rethinking dams

New water infrastructure in the north should be part of an integrated investment program to limit overall environmental impacts. Focusing on new dams applies 19th-century thinking to a 21st-century problem, and we have three major concerns about the rush to build dams in northern Australia.

First, the process to establish infrastructure priorities for federal investment is unclear. For instance, it’s uncertain how the projects are connected to Queensland’s State Infrastructure Plan.

Investment in new water infrastructure across northern Australia needs to be part of a long-term water resource plan. This requires clearly articulated objectives for the development of northern Australia, along with assessment criteria that relate to economic, social and environmental outcomes, such as those used in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

Second, the federal government emphasises on-stream dams. Dams built across the main river in this way have many well-recognised problems, including:

*    lack of environmental flows (insufficient water at the appropriate frequency and duration to support ecosystems)

*    flow inversion (higher flows may occur in the dry season than in the wet, when the bulk of rainfall occurs)

*    barriers to fish movement and loss of connectivity to wetlands

*    water quality and temperature impacts (unless there is a multi-level off-take).

As a minimum, new dams should be built away from major waterways (such as on small, tributary streams) and designed to minimise environmental impacts. This requires planning in the early stages, as such alternatives are extremely difficult to retrofit to an existing system.

Finally, the federal government proposals make no mention of climate change impacts. Irrigation and intensive manufacturing industries demand highly reliable water supplies.

While high-value use of water should be encouraged, new industries need to be able to adapt for the increased frequency of low flows; as well as increased intensity of flood events. Government investment needs to build resilience as well as high-value use.

Detailed planning, not press releases

In place of the rather ad hoc approach to improvements in water infrastructure, such as the projects announced by the federal government in advance of the election, we need a more holistic and considered approach.

The A$20 million investment for 14 feasibility studies and business cases in Queensland represents a relatively small amount of money for each project, and runs the risk of having them undertaken in isolation. The feasibility studies should be part of the entirety of the government’s plan for A$2.5 billion in new dams for northern Australia.

Water resource planning is too important and too expensive to cut corners on planning. Investment proposals for Queensland need to be integrated with water resource planning across the state, and across northern Australia, and with appropriate consideration of climate change impacts.

Fast tracking dams without considering ecosystem impacts, future variability in water supplies, and resilience in local communities merely sets the scene for future problems that will likely demand another round of intervention and reform.

SOURCE

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



Wednesday, June 29, 2016




Pauline

An interesting email below from a fellow Queenslander

Friends,

After eight years of my investigating, speaking out publicly, and holding members of parliament accountable, Pauline Hanson invited me to join her on the Queensland senate ticket for the federal election on 2 July.

After doing my due diligence with people who’ve known her for 20 years and after a 12 hour chat with Pauline I’m proud to be standing with her

She is not as the media and political opponents have portrayed. Pauline is intelligent, quick, honest, courageous and persistent. We are passionate about bringing back our country.

What we stand for in nine sentences: http://www.onenation.com.au/principles

Economics and Tax policy: http://www.onenation.com.au/policies/economics

Affordable Energy and Climate Change policy: http://www.onenation.com.au/policies/affordable-energy

Policies: http://www.onenation.com.au/policies

If you’re a Queenslander please vote for us. If you have Queensland friends or family please forward this email.

How to Vote card Queensland senate: http://www.onenation.com.au/pdfs/HTV16/QLD/QLDsenateHTVweb.pdf

How to vote cards for all states and seats with Pauline’s candidates: http://www.onenation.com.au/vote

Please help us to speak out on the floor of parliament and to restore integrity to parliament.

Regards and thanks,

Malcolm Roberts






Global cooling hits Sydney

Sydneysiders felt the chill on Monday as temperatures plummeted to their coolest in two decades as New South Wales experiences the most powerful cold front in three years.

The maximum temperature reached was just 11.7 degrees but remained mostly in the single digit range all day.

The cold temperatures make it the coolest day for any month in 20 years, said Brett Dutschke, senior meteorologist with Weatherzone.

He told the Sydney Morning Herald that temperatures have averaged just 10.4 degrees over the past three days, the coldest June period in six years.

An overnight low of eight degrees was met with rain in Sydney on Monday morning with a top of just 13 degrees expected throughout the day.

Peter Zmijewski, a senior forecaster with the Bureau of Meteorology said: 'The temperature is a bit colder than it normally is at this time of year.'

'There's a lot of cloud moving through the east coast. We do expect rainfall to continue throughout Monday,' he told Daily mail Australia.

After experiencing the coldest morning of the year on Sunday there will be no let up for Sydneysiders during the week, with damp and chilly weather forecast for the early part of the seven day period.

Over the weekend, temperatures dropped to just above five degrees in the CBD on Sunday and although Monday will not be as chilly, rain is forecast to set in.

SOURCE






Brexit could make it easier for Australians to live and work in the UK

AUSTRALIA’S high commissioner to the UK says Brexit could provide an opportunity to renegotiate visa arrangements and make it easier for Australians to live and work in Britain.

Alexander Downer has been a vocal critic of restrictions introduced on working visas for Australians who travel to and live in the UK, describing its policies as “discriminatory”.

But while Europeans scramble to get their hands on British passports and uncertainty reigns, the Australian diplomat is taking a positive approach to the impending split, pledging to try to negotiate a better deal for Aussies moving to the mother country.

Speaking on ABC radio on Tuesday morning, Mr Downer said, as a representative of the Australian government in the UK, his job was to seek opportunities amid the Brexit fallout.

And while the implications of the eurozone breakup for Australia remain to be seen, he pledged to seize on the transition as an opportunity to address restrictions on working visas.

“We’ve been critical of the arrangements that have been put in place,” he said.

“There are all sorts of restrictions on Australians right now and whether there’ll be opportunities to change that when the new arrangements come into place, we simply don’t know. But we should try in any case, and that’s what we’ll do.”

The number of Australians working in the UK has declined by 40 per cent since 2008, and while Mr Downer concedes the shift can partly be attributed to economic forces, there are also restrictions in place preventing Australians from becoming employed that the British government has refused to budge on.

In 2011, the UK cut off entry routes for Australian skilled workers and capped employer-sponsored visas at just 20,000 places a year. The British government cited requirements by the European Union to prioritise workers within the zone.

In April this year, further restrictions were introduced including a minimum income requirement.

The number of Australians obtaining work visas from the UK Home Office has halved in the past decade, and now sits at less than 15,000.

The Australian government’s protest to the visa crackdown, led by Mr Downer, resulted in an extraordinary, while ultimately futile, debate at Westminster earlier this year.

Mr Downer has continued his call for changes to the Tier 2 visa system to ensure Australians don’t have to travel home in order to change jobs and make it easier for them to gain employment in the UK in the first place.

The former foreign minister has previously told news.com.au it was “too hypothetical” to tell whether Australians would have greater visa access under a Brexit scenario where EU migrants could be limited, but has spoken with optimism on the topic since the historical ballot closed.

University of Adelaide UK politics expert Clement Macintyre told news.com.au the referendum result left room for negotiations that couldn’t have happened before.

“The opposition to high levels of immigration in the UK that lay at the centre of some of the Brexit campaigning was making it harder for Australians in some respects to land visas and secure work arrangement because there was increasing pressure for the government to crack down across the board,” he said.

The UK economy used to rely on European workers to fill many skilled and unskilled jobs.

Prof Macintyre said it was now likely those jobs would be open to people from other parts of the world, particularly Commonwealth countries.

“Under the old prospect, what we were confident about was that as long as the UK was part of the EU there was unlikely to be any change for the visa requirements for Australians in the UK,” he said.

“This vote at least opens the door to negotiation that could lead to outcomes that are favourable for Australian people who want to spend some time in and live and work in the UK.”

He said while it was too early to speculate on Britain’s negotiations out of the EU or its leadership, the possibility of a government led by Boris Johnson was good news for Australians.

The former London mayor and prime ministerial hopeful, who is tipped to take over the top job after David Cameron’s Brexit-induced departure in October, has previously advocated for a “free mobility labour zone” between Commonwealth countries.

“He is on the record as talking about wanting warmer relations with Australia, and while we don’t know that Johnson will be prime minister, and we’ve got no idea on what terms of negotiations the exit will happen, what is true is that if the UK wants access to the single market, it’s going to have to accept some freedom of movement,” Prof Macintyre said.

In 2015 Johnson proposed an Australia-UK agreement to allow greater movement of skilled people between both countries.

“He believes that Commonwealth citizens should be given more freedom to contribute to London’s economy, culture and communities, particularly given the strong cultural connections between our countries,” a spokeswoman for the then-mayor told news.com.au.

“As a start, the mayor has proposed an agreement between Australia and the United Kingdom that allows greater movement of skilled people between both countries in order to address skills shortages. This could be extended further to other Commonwealth countries, if successful.”

With the shock outcome only five days old, uncertainty remains the key word in discussion of all things Brexit.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday revealed Australia and New Zealand could work together on joint free trade and visa agreements to steer the region through the shock waves of Britain’s exit.

“If my government is re-elected on Saturday, (NZ Prime Minister) John Key and I will meet shortly thereafter with our officials and set up a co-operative framework in which Australia and New Zealand will work together to ensure that we maximise any opportunities that arise out of these changes, but also ensure above all that the interests of Australians and New Zealanders and Australian and New Zealand businesses are protected,” he said.

SOURCE







Triggs, HRC accused of ‘shameful conduct’ in 18c students case

She's an evil Leftist old bag

Human Rights Commission staff and president Gillian Triggs were accused in a racial hatred case yesterday of “stooping” to a ­regrettable low in a desperate ­attempt to “avoid scrutiny of their shameful conduct” against university students.

In an escalating row between the students, indigenous staff member Cindy Prior, who ejected them from their Queensland University of Technology’s “culturally safe” computer lab ­because they were white, and the commission, the human rights body is coming under unprecedented scrutiny.

Disclosures of the commission’s internal workings in dozens of pages of documents, obtained under Freedom of Information and showing the handling of Ms Prior’s Racial Discrimination Act complaint against the students, were cited by Brisbane barrister Tony Morris QC in a scathing legal attack launched yesterday.

Professor Triggs last week urged independent barrister Angus Stewart SC to stop investigations into the complaints by students Calum Thwaites, Jackson Powell and Alex Wood that their human rights had been ­“flagrantly” breached by the ­commission.

Professor Triggs in a 30-page legal rebuttal described the formal complaints of the students, who allege that the human rights body has botched the case, as “purely speculative”, “lacking in substance” and ­“misconceived”.

The students are accused of ­racial hatred for writing Facebook posts which caused offence to Ms Prior after she had turned them away from the computer lab in the Oodgeroo Unit in May 2013. Ms Prior went on stress leave and is seeking more than $250,000 damages after not working for almost all of the past three years.

Mr Morris, in a damning reply yesterday, revealed that Mr Thwaites had recently abandoned his study to become a schoolteacher because he was concerned the taint on his reputation from being accused of racial hatred under the controversial section 18c would make him unemployable. The lawyer described a ­“besetting irony” in Professor Triggs’s reasons for seeking to terminate the students’ complaints that their human rights were breached, given the commission had permitted to advance to the Federal Circuit what he described as the “hopeless” case of Ms Prior.

Mr Morris said it was wrong and unjust that an “utterly unmeritorious complaint” by Ms Prior had attracted from the Human Rights Commission “greater forbearance and leniency than the grave and serious complaints by the (students)”. The students were “not permitted to enjoy the same substantive rights as those which the Human Rights Commission now insists should be applied in its favour”.

He said the commission had “applied more time, effort and ­resources — all paid for by the taxpayer — in scrutinising and criticising the present complaints (by the students), all in the space of less than two months, than it ­applied to the Prior complaint in the period of roughly 15 months”.

“The nature of the allegations made by Ms Prior, even if those ­allegations were ultimately to be dismissed, had the capacity to inflict long-term and devastating ­injury to the reputations of seven young tertiary students, and the very real potential to jeopardise their future employment prospects,” Mr Morris said.

The three students still in the case have refused to pay Ms Prior any of the money her lawyers were demanding, while four ­others who were named in her original litigation made private settlements.

Mr Powell is being sued ­because after being told by Ms Prior to leave the computer lab he posted on Facebook “I wonder where the white supremacist computer lab is”. Mr Wood is being sued because he wrote: “Just got kicked out of the unsigned ­indigenous computer room. QUT stopping segregation with segregation.” Mr Thwaites has insisted since 2013 that he was a victim of identity theft with a false Facebook account in his name and the post: “ITT niggers.’’

Professor Triggs and the commission are now accused of fearing “a risk of embarrassment” that they will be found to have breached the students’ human rights.

SOURCE






Sydney Muslim charged over alleged kidnap and rape of schoolgirl

A man arrested after a police pursuit in the beachside Sydney suburb of Bondi has been charged over two alleged sexual assaults, including the kidnapping and rape of a schoolgirl.

Mustafa Kayirici, 26, was arrested yesterday after a wild chase that began when he allegedly attempted to evade police investigating the assaults.

Police allege a 22-year-old woman was allegedly sexually assaulted and robbed by a man armed with a gun at a CBD motel on June 19.

Meanwhile, a 13-year-old girl was allegedly kidnapped in Parramatta on Friday morning and later sexually assaulted at various locations around Sydney. Her attacker was allegedly armed with a knife.

Appearing in court today via video link with his blackened eyes swollen shut after yesterday's arrest, Mr Kayirici denied assaulting the women.

"They're making me out to be some pedophile, some rapist, a predator," he told the magistrate.

"I did not know this person was 13.  She lied about her age and everything was consensual.

"I have it all on tape.  Cameras don't lie."

Mr Kayirici faces a string of charges, including sexual assault, indecent assault, detaining for advantage, kidnapping, acts of indecency, police pursuit, and resisting an officer.

He didn't use a lawyer in court today, instead choosing to represent himself.

Police prosecutors pleaded with the magistrate not to give Mr Kayirici bail, calling his alleged crimes "unthinkable" and "extreme".

The magistrate moved swiftly to deny bail, saying it would place female members of the community in "extreme danger".

Police searching for Mr Kayirici attempted to stop his silver Ford sedan on Bondi Road just after 11.30am yesterday.

When he allegedly failed to stop for officers, a pursuit was initiated. His Ford travelled through a park before crashing into parked cars on Old South Head Road.

The car finally came to a halt on the footpath behind a bus stop.

Witnesses described the violent clash between the driver and police.

"It was just 'get out, get out, get out, get on the floor'," James Dimovski, who was driving nearby when the crash happened, said.

"I don't think he wanted to get out so they pulled him out and just bashed him, basically bashed him."

SOURCE





Tuesday, June 28, 2016



Extraordinary!

Below is an ALP leaflet I got in my letterbox today.  Yet Mr. Turnbull has repeatedly and emphatically said that he is NOT going to privatise Medicare.  What are we to think of a political party that can find only lies to promote itself with?  It is certainly reminiscent of another famous socialist:  Dr. Goebbels -- and his dictum that if you tell a big enough lie often enough, people will believe it.  The leaflet was authorized by Evan Moorhead, the current Secretary of the Australian Labor Party in Queensland.








The man who lost the "unlosable" election still thinks we should listen to him about Brexit

Scary talk from Hewson.  When will it sink in that NOTHING will change for at least a year or maybe two?  Exit negotiations have not even begun yet.  And there is no threat to free trade.  The EU needs the British market.  Germany exports 800,000 cars to Britain each year.  Are they going to give that up?

BRITAIN’S shock decision to leave the European Union is a “king hit” that is bad news for Australia, a former Liberal leader has said.

While Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tries to delicately play down the oncoming effects of the split while calling for calm, commentators are ignoring his pleas and digging into both sides of politics over their handling of the fallout.

Speaking on ABC radio, former Liberal leader John Hewson criticised both leaders for failing to acknowledge the full consequences of a Brexit for Australians. “This is a king hit (to the economy), and it’s a king hit also in political terms,” he said. “This is all bad news for Australia, and the challenge is not being recognised by either side of politics.”

Mr Hewson said neither the government nor opposition had conceded how a global economic shake up brought on by the Brexit would hit Australia, and said they were each leaning on “optimistic” budget forecasts.

“It’s global uncertainty. Global growth rates have been consistently downgraded by the IMF and the World Bank each time they make announcements. I think we’ll see more of that,” he said.  “World trade I think fell about 14 per cent last year. I mean this is all bad news for Australia.

“I think those budget forecasts on which they’re both relying are very optimistic. They were optimistic to start with, I think more optimistic now we’ve had Brexit.”

Former Labor trade minister Craig Emerson also weighed in on the effects Australia would feel, telling ABC radio the economic effects would be more than brief market fluctuations.

“I don’t think it’s going to be one of these matters that’s a little bump in the stock market for the next couple of days and then it’ll be all over,” he said.

“It’s in the interest of the UK to exit as smoothly as possible but it’s not necessarily in the interest of the EU that it does exit as smoothly as possible because the EU will want to demonstrate this is a difficult and painful process in order to reduce the likelihood of other countries exiting.”

Treasurer Scott Morrison this morning called for cool heads as Australian markets prepared for a second day of fallout from the Brexit decision. “What has happened in the UK is a simple reminder of the uncertainty that’s out there,” he told the Seven Network on Monday.

Brexit wasn’t the only issue creating headwinds in the global economy, Mr Morrison said, citing changes in China, the deflation and currency concerns in Japan and the political situation in the US.

“At this time of uncertainty, you’ve got to focus on the things that you can control,” he said. “You can’t control the things that are out there well beyond us but what you can control is how much you spend, how much you tax.”

While each calling for calm, both Mr Turnbull and Bill Shorten have used uncertainty in the wake of the Brexit result to sway voters their way ahead of Saturday’s election.

The Prime Minister is promising economic stability while the opposition leader seeks to paint a picture of political instability within the government, saying the Brexit vote and following turmoil had arisen from “weak leadership and a divided government”.

SOURCE





Britain’s exit from European Union flags big changes across the globe

Rita Panahi

WATCHING the unhinged and unrestrained hysteria of the Left has been a delightful side benefit of the Brexit poll.

While the conservatives who campaigned for Great Britain to remain in the European Union have largely accepted the result with a measure of grace, elements of the Left have reacted with a level of hyperbole that is remarkable even by their shrill standards.

There are even demands for a new poll from the Brexit losers who seem to think democracy is only a valid exercise if their side wins. But a referendum is not a game of rock, paper, scissors that can be extended to a best of three if you don’t like the result.

The EU referendum showed that voters won’t be swayed by slurs, sneers and scaremongering. The tactic of characterising Leave voters as a pack of unthinking xenophobes backfired spectacularly.

Voters could smell the desperation and dishonesty of the Remainers. Indeed, the result showed that the shameful strategy of vilifying the majority of Brits who voted to leave the irreparably broken EU drove many undecided voters into the Leave camp, which was trailing by 20 points at the start of the campaign.

Locally, the reaction has been just as demented, as members of the media led by overpaid and under-worked ABC troglodytes prophesy global doom and calamity and condemn Brits as ignorant racists.

It’s quite extraordinary that the same people who are desperate for Australia to break away from Britain to become a republic are aghast that Brits want to break away from Belgium and reaffirm their sovereignty.

Of course, immigration was a key Brexit issue — Europe’s porous borders have seen significant change in many parts of England flooded with illegal immigrants — but it was far from the only issue.

Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan applauded the British for reacting with “calm, common sense and courage” when threatened with Armageddon.

“Virtually every week, a letter would appear in one of the broadsheets signed by a collection of hoary-headed grandees: industrialists one week, green activists the next, actors the next,” he wrote.

“The message was always the same: ‘Little people! We’re terribly important, and we’re ordering you to vote Remain!’ It wasn’t Project Fear so much as Project Sneer.

“Yes, Leavers are patriotic. Yes, we believe in Britain. But we’re not anti-Europe. We just want to be able to run our own affairs.”

If the reaction of the Australian Left to the EU referendum is any guide, then we should brace ourselves for toys flying out of cots after Saturday’s federal poll.

But what is more interesting than the Brexit result in isolation is the global trend of voters rejecting the establishment.

The winds of political change are blowing a gale from the UK to the US, to places like the Philippines and even right here in Australia.

If a figure like Donald Trump can launch a serious challenge for the US presidency, then you know voters have grown weary of the status quo and will look far and wide for an alternative — any alternative.

Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination despite a brutal campaign both from mainstream media outlets and the spooked GOP establishment desperate to purge this outsider from conservative ranks.

The attacks against Trump are often thinly veiled abuse of his supporters, who are portrayed as dimwitted hillbillies instead of ordinary Americans who feel deeply disenchanted with a political system they see as corrupted by powerful interest groups and lobbyists.

Those horror-struck by the US billionaire’s antics should have a look at what’s transpired in the Philippines in recent months, where president-elect Rodrigo Duterte makes Trump look like a safe-as-houses choirboy.

The rejection of the condescending ruling class is an international phenomenon, and Australia is not immune.

Yesterday you could almost hear the collective yawn across the country as the Coalition officially launched its campaign and Labor held a second campaign launch.

The electorate is disengaged, and one wonders what the voter turnout would be on Saturday if compulsory voting didn’t force citizens to take part in the democratic process.

Take a deeper look at the polls and it’s evident that there is a heightened level of disillusionment with the major parties, including the Greens.

According to a Newspoll conducted earlier this month, a record number of voters plan to support a micro-party or an independent.

Close to one in six voters plan to cast their ballot for a candidate who does not represent Labor, Coalition, or Greens parties.

Meanwhile we have the astonishing situation of the Regressive Left, both here and overseas, railing against a new enemy: democracy.

These folks, who have made an art form of treating the masses with barely concealed disdain, seriously argue that referendums and plebiscites are undesirable, that ordinary voters can’t be trusted to debate and determine issues such as same-sex marriage.

Brexit showed just how out of touch much of the political and media class are from the public they are supposed to serve.

SOURCE






Improve education, but don't fund more waste
    
Jennifer Buckingham

Recent arguments in favour of a large increase in school funding have cited the 'Gonski' report and OECD research showing a long-term economic return on investment in education. However, close scrutiny reveals that they do not provide strong justification in the current Australian context.

The Gonski report found that funding for schools was complex and inefficient. It recommended a complete overhaul of school funding that required a new agreement between the federal, state and territory governments. The increase in federal funding that is attributed to the 'Gonski model' was not inherent in the Gonski committee's recommendations -- a point confirmed by David Gonski himself.

The implications of international research on education spending and economic growth are also far from straightforward. The largest pay-offs from increased education spending are in developing countries where increased spending is from a low base and often means providing decent primary school education where none existed previously. This is a very different prospect to increasing spending where funding and provision are already high.

A big assumption in imputing economic returns to education spending is that higher spending will lead to better quality of education and hence better outcomes. This is by no means guaranteed. Economists surveyed in the latest Economic Society of Australia poll made this case repeatedly. While a majority of the economists surveyed agreed that education spending is on balance more likely to have a long term dividend than a company tax cut, neither policy was given an unequivocal endorsement in terms of future benefits.

While there are undoubtedly some schools around Australia that are under-resourced, it would be a mistake to conclude that this is purely a function of the size of the government's education budget rather than the way it is managed. Large amounts of education funding sometimes never reach schools and even more is spent on policies and programs that don't work. There may be a case for increased school funding as a rock solid investment in the future, but it can't be made while there is so much waste in the system at present.

SOURCE





Tougher laws to be introduced for masked 'cowards' following violent Melbourne protests

Masked "cowards" who commit violence in public places will face tougher penalties after a series of violent protests between rival groups in Melbourne.

Splinter groups of masked people dressed in black have caused trouble at recent rallies, although police generally managed to keep the anti-Islam and anti-racism groups apart at the latest protest on Sunday.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews said the government will introduce new public order laws and penalties around affray and riotous behaviour to deal with people wearing masks.

"There will be additional penalties, additional specific offences and an aggravating factor, which means you'll get more time where you belong, behind bars, if you turn up and act violently with a mask on," Mr Andrews said.

"We are not having a situation where people turn our streets into some sort of battleground."

An anti racism and fascism protester is arrested for starting a fire after they burnt the Australian flag. © AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy An anti racism and fascism protester is arrested for starting a fire after they burnt the Australian flag. Police were generally pleased with the behaviour of 120 True Blue Crew and 200 rival Campaign Against Racism and Fascism protesters at Sunday's rally, which was marred by flags being set alight and scuffles involving a splinter group.

But there was no repeat of the violent clashes between the opposing groups at a Coburg rally in late May.

Yesterday Mr Andrews warned future offenders will "feel the full force of the law".

"If you commit a violent act and you are wearing a mask, then you will receive a significantly higher penalty because of the cowardly nature of wearing that mask," he said.

"You will feel the full force of the law because hardworking Victorians and their government are sick and tired of having to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, indeed millions of dollars, to deal with this sort of riotous behaviour."

Opposition attorney-general John Pesutto said police no longer have the powers they need to de-escalate volatile situations because the Labor government had dramatically weakened the coalition's tough move-on laws.

SOURCE

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



Monday, June 27, 2016



Gun regulation:  Is Australia a model that the USA should adopt?

In the wake of the recent shootings at Orlando and elsewhere, many Leftist commentators have pointed to the strict gun controls introduced by Australia in 1996 and have noted that Australia has had NO mass shootings since the laws were enacted.  They assert that this is powerful evidence for the enactment of such laws in America. But is it true?  Did Australia's strict laws reduce gun deaths?

Before I answer that, I think I might point out that there are important demographic differences between the U.S. and Australian populations.  In particular, the minorities are different.  Australia has negligible Africans but large numbers of Han Chinese.  And those two groups differ greatly in propensity to crime generally and homicide in particular.  The Chinese are as pacific as Africans are violent.  I don't think I have ever heard of a Han Chinese breaking into someone's house, whereas that happens daily in the USA.  So Australians have a much smaller need for guns as self-defense.  I love the Han.

But one part of the Leftist claim is true.  There have indeed been no mass shootings since 1996 in Australia. But such shootings were rare anyway and gun crimes were already on the way down in Australia so how do we allow for that?  Below is an article from a major medical journal that has done all the statistics. Its conclusions have been widely reported but almost always misreported.  So I produce the actual journal abstract below.

As you can see, they found that the decline in gun deaths had speeded up but not to a statistically significant degree.  More interestingly, the rate for all crimes had declined even more than the decline in gun deaths.  So all we can say is that Australia has been getting steadily safer for a long time now.  There is no evidence that guns have anything to do with it.  The journal article:



Association Between Gun Law Reforms and Intentional Firearm Deaths in Australia, 1979-2013

Simon Chapman et al.

ABSTRACT

Importance

Rapid-fire weapons are often used by perpetrators in mass shooting incidents. In 1996 Australia introduced major gun law reforms that included a ban on semiautomatic rifles and pump-action shotguns and rifles and also initiated a program for buyback of firearms.

Objective

To determine whether enactment of the 1996 gun laws and buyback program were followed by changes in the incidence of mass firearm homicides and total firearm deaths.

Design

Observational study using Australian government statistics on deaths caused by firearms (1979-2013) and news reports of mass shootings in Australia (1979–May 2016). Changes in intentional firearm death rates were analyzed with negative binomial regression, and data on firearm-related mass killings were compared.

Exposures

Implementation of major national gun law reforms.

Main Outcomes and Measures

Changes in mass fatal shooting incidents (defined as ≥5 victims, not including the perpetrator) and in trends of rates of total firearm deaths, firearm homicides and suicides, and total homicides and suicides per 100 000 population.

Results

From 1979-1996 (before gun law reforms), 13 fatal mass shootings occurred in Australia, whereas from 1997 through May 2016 (after gun law reforms), no fatal mass shootings occurred. There was also significant change in the preexisting downward trends for rates of total firearm deaths prior to vs after gun law reform. From 1979-1996, the mean rate of total firearm deaths was 3.6 (95% CI, 3.3-3.9) per 100 000 population (average decline of 3% per year; annual trend, 0.970; 95% CI, 0.963-0.976), whereas from 1997-2013 (after gun law reforms), the mean rate of total firearm deaths was 1.2 (95% CI, 1.0-1.4) per 100 000 population (average decline of 4.9% per year; annual trend, 0.951; 95% CI, 0.940-0.962), with a ratio of trends in annual death rates of 0.981 (95% CI, 0.968-0.993). There was a statistically significant acceleration in the preexisting downward trend for firearm suicide (ratio of trends, 0.981; 95% CI, 0.970-0.993), but this was not statistically significant for firearm homicide (ratio of trends, 0.975; 95% CI, 0.949-1.001). From 1979-1996, the mean annual rate of total nonfirearm suicide and homicide deaths was 10.6 (95% CI, 10.0-11.2) per 100 000 population (average increase of 2.1% per year; annual trend, 1.021; 95% CI, 1.016-1.026), whereas from 1997-2013, the mean annual rate was 11.8 (95% CI, 11.3-12.3) per 100 000 (average decline of 1.4% per year; annual trend, 0.986; 95% CI, 0.980-0.993), with a ratio of trends of 0.966 (95% CI, 0.958-0.973). There was no evidence of substitution of other lethal methods for suicides or homicides.

Conclusions and Relevance

Following enactment of gun law reforms in Australia in 1996, there were no mass firearm killings through May 2016. There was a more rapid decline in firearm deaths between 1997 and 2013 compared with before 1997 but also a decline in total nonfirearm suicide and homicide deaths of a greater magnitude. Because of this, it is not possible to determine whether the change in firearm deaths can be attributed to the gun law reforms.

JAMA. Published online June 22, 2016. doi:10.1001/jama.2016.8752






Grant-hungry scientists stage a tantrum about the Barrier Reef while on their holiday in Hawaii

Many causes of bleaching alleged but not a word about El Nino, the most probable cause.  These guys are just con-men.  Document probably written by a small but powerful clique only

As the largest international gathering of coral reef experts comes to a close, scientists have sent a letter to Australian officials calling for action to save the world's reefs, which are being rapidly damaged.

The letter was sent on Saturday to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull imploring the government to do more to conserve the nation's reefs and curb fossil fuel consumption.

The letter, signed by past and present presidents of the International Society for Reef Studies on behalf of the 2000 attendees of the International Coral Reef Symposium that was held in Honolulu this week, urged the Australian government to prioritise its Great Barrier Reef.

"This year has seen the worst mass bleaching in history, threatening many coral reefs around the world including the whole of the northern Great Barrier Reef, the biggest and best-known of all reefs," the letter said.

"The damage to this Australian icon has already been devastating. In addition to damage from greenhouse gases, port dredging and shipping of fossil fuels across the Great Barrier Reef contravene Australia's responsibilities for stewardship of the Reef under the World Heritage Convention."

Scientists are not known for their political activism, said James Cook University professor Terry Hughes, but they felt this crisis warranted such action.

A call to action from three Pacific island nations whose reefs are in the crosshairs of the largest and longest-lasting coral bleaching event in recorded history was presented on Friday at the conclusion of the symposium in Honolulu.

The heads of state from Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands attended the conference and will provide a plan to help save their ailing coral reefs.

The call to action, signed by the three presidents, asked for better collaboration between the scientific community and local governments, saying there needs to be more funding and a strengthened commitment to protecting the reefs.

In response to the letter, the scientific community at the conference said they would work with national leaders of Micronesia, the Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the world "to curb the continued loss of coral reefs."

Bleaching is a process where corals, stressed by hot ocean waters and other environmental changes, lose their colour as the symbiotic algae that lives within them is released. Severe or concurrent years of bleaching can kill coral reefs, as has been documented over the past two years in oceans around the world. Scientists expect a third year of bleaching to last through the end of 2016.

In the northern third of the Great Barrier Reef, close to half of the corals have died in the past three months, said Hughes, who focuses his research there.

But the panel of scientists emphasised the progress they have made over the past 30 years and stressed that good research and management programs for coral reefs are available. The scientists said they just need the proper funding and political will to enact them.

SOURCE





Some rare realism about prospects of Far Northern agricultural development

Developing the "empty North" has long been a dream.  But there are good reasons why it is mostly empty -- as the Ord River scheme showed.  A story here shows that investors are rightly skeptical of projects there


An expert says opportunities to expand agricultural production in northern Australia have been dramatically overstated.

"It's a very fierce climate, ask any farmer if they'd like to go farm somewhere with a guaranteed drought every year?'" said Charles Darwin University Professor Andrew Campbell.

"Evaporation is markedly greater than rainfall and has water scarcity, and there are many novel pests and diseases, inputs costs are much higher, labour is more difficult to attract, infrastructure is much poorer and supply chains are much more vulnerable."

Speaking at the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering (ATSE) conference, he said food production is only likely to increase by around 5 per cent in northern Australia.

He highlighted as a rare exception, the mango industry outside Darwin. Built by Vietnamese immigrants with links to the market traders in Sydney and Melbourne, which has become a $100 million industry.

Indigenous wild rices on the flood plains have genetic diversity that could be cross bred with mainstream rices, to improve resilience in a changing climate.

Investment banker David Williams of Kidder Williams told the conference he was highly critical of big scale failures in the Ord Irrigation scheme, with its long history of crops destroyed by pests and a vicious climate.

SOURCE





Federal election 2016: PM must tell voters home truths about Shorten

Grace Collier

No one should be shocked by Bill Shorten’s Medicare scare election scam. There is a reason this present crop of Labor types is so at ease telling bald-faced lies to camera. Like Shorten, most of them are former union officials and, as such, are expert in the art of devious, malicious deception.

These guys have run hundreds of enterprise bargaining agreement campaigns, which are mini election campaigns in the workplace. Union officials regularly have relied on far-fetched lie-telling to force frightened workers, like herded cattle, through the right gate.

Though an EBA campaign occurs within a single workplace, and an election occurs across the national landscape, in both processes a political contest between labour and capital occurs, and that contest leads up to one defining moment: a democratic vote for all.

Both sides vie for the hearts and minds of the voters, and put material out to state their case. In the end the voters are often overwhelmed, bewildered. They cannot read everything, so instead they take a leap of faith. Voters cast their vote to the side they like most and trust them to tell them how to vote. Then they hope for the best.

The way unions win EBA campaigns is by telling terrifying lies to the workers about the conditions and entitlements they will lose if they vote yes to the EBA. If management hasn’t anticipated the lies, it is not positioned to counter as it should. It doesn’t prepare the workers beforehand for the lies that will be told and doesn’t strike back hard afterwards with direct communication, even ridicule, setting out the truth.

Instead, management reacts with shock and outrage-induced paralysis sets in. On display is the processing of its personal emotional response to the lies (how could they say this stuff, it’s an outrage!), which workers are not interested in. Leadership falls by the wayside. Campaign momentum and control is lost.

In the same way an EBA provides the means for unions to control a workplace, a federal election provides a chance for unions to control our government. Our present election is not a referendum on keeping Medicare; it is a referendum on whether we want the unions running Australia.

Shorten is the union rep, screaming about how we are all going to lose our entitlements. Is manipulation of vulnerable people via the use of scary nonsense an unethical thing to do? Labor cares not; it is a tried-and-true EBA tactic. Anyway, the end justifies the means.

Malcolm Turnbull is the manager, caught up in his own indignation. Has Turnbull ever been in an EBA campaign? Not likely. He must be reeling at the effrontery and wondering how low this union bloke is prepared to go. While Turnbull is busy denying the lies about himself, he is not pointing out the facts about his opponent.

If the community had the truth about Shorten put before it, very few would vote the way he asks. For Turnbull, shattering trust in Shorten would be an easy task, especially among the traditional Labor base. Labor’s brand is that it cares about the low-paid workers and puts people first, yet the party couldn’t have chosen a leader more unfitting, more ridiculously inappropriate, to promote it.

Shorten’s history can be found on the transcript from the Royal Commission into Trade Union Governance and Corruption. Past case studies include Chiquita, Cleanevent and more. Under Shorten’s rule, his union boomed, inflated by false membership numbers gained by dirty deals done dirt cheap. How much wage theft occurred, how much did the lowest paid miss out on? Perhaps half a billion.

Shorten derided penalty rates as fanciful in the real world, a gold standard, when justifying a dodgy deal done behind the backs of workers to trade their wages away. These words, his exact quotes, should be used in a brutal advertising campaign.

Today, Shorten’s campaign runs partly on dirty money. Dodgy deals, done behind the backs of workers at Coles, Woolworths and more, have been funnelled through a union into Labor. There are probably 500,000 workers missing out on penalty rates, unlawfully, right now. Turnbull could stand up and condemn this and demand Shorten renounce it.

When the 7-Eleven wage rip-offs came to light, Shorten used the case to announce a policy to increase penalties on employers. But his proposed reform exempts small business, meaning 7-Eleven franchisees wouldn’t be caught in Labor’s so-called plan to catch them. Turnbull could point this out and pose a question along the lines of: Is this a genuine error, just staggering stupidity or has yet another dodgy deal, somewhere, with someone been done?

Shorten calls Turnbull a rich man’s Tony Abbott. Turnbull should call Shorten a celebrity union official to the rich and the best friend a corrupt business could have. Turnbull should say all of the above and more.

For as long as he doesn’t, of the two men, who do you think the voters will see as stronger, hungrier, more determined: Shorten, who has the guts to tell outrageous lies about Turnbull; or Turnbull, who hasn’t the guts to tell simple truths about Shorten?

SOURCE

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


Sunday, June 26, 2016



Great Barrier Reef: Qld Government's cattle station purchase 'makes agriculture sector scapegoat'

Let's be clear:  This is NOT agricultural runoff being discussed.  It is pastoral runoff.  A cattle station and an arable farm are not the same.  There are virtually no arable farms in the Northern half of Cape York peninsula and yet that is where coral bleaching is greatest -- providing an excellent natural experiment that proves Greenie claims about agricultural runoff to be false.

Pastoral runoff may however be a different thing.  The property discussed below does appear to have been badly managed, if managed at all.  Producing anything in such a remote area must encounter a lot of high costs so cutting costs on management might be expected.  In the circumstances, the steps being taken by the Queensland government are well-advised.

There is however no reason why one property must be taken as proving a generality.  For all we know, there may be no other pastoral properties in the far North that are producing massive runoff.  No-one has made that case -- Greenie hand-waving aside



The agricultural sector says it is being unfairly targeted by the Queensland Government after it purchased a cattle station to reduce sediment flowing into the Great Barrier Reef.

Queensland Environment Minister Steven Miles announced on Wednesday the Government had bought Springvale Station in the state's north for $7 million.

Mr Miles said the reason for the purchase was to stem the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of sediment pollution flowing from the property into the Great Barrier Reef each year.

Generations of cattle grazing has caused massive gullies, etched deep into Springvale Station's 56,000 hectares.

These gullies carry 500,000 tonnes of sediment per year into the Normanby catchment, explained Australian Rivers Institute's Dr Andrew Brooks.

"The Normanby catchment represents about 50 per cent of the total run off to the northern part of the Great Barrier Reef," Dr Brooks told PM.

Because of this Dr Brooks supported the Queensland Government's purchase, as well as plans to rehabilitate the land and prevent further sediment from damaging the reef.

"The relationship between sediment run off and impact on coral has been well established," he said.

"What we know is that these volumes of sediment coming from this property, just to put it in perspective, that's 50,000 tipper trucks worth of sediment. "These gullies don't just deliver sediment. They also deliver nutrients. So per unit area these gullies are contributing twice the level of nutrients as a cane paddock in the wet tropics."

Mr Miles said smoothing out the gullies and replanting grass will begin as soon as possible but it is too early to tell how long the whole remediation process will take.

In the meantime, former station owners have until late next year to remove the several thousand head of cattle from the land.

While a loud chorus has praised the Queensland Government's purchase as a major step forward in remediation of the Great Barrier Reef, the agricultural sector has some reservations about the $7 million sale.

Reef Alliance chair Ruth Wade said the Queensland Government needed to ensure other industries near the reef also pull their weight. "There are areas like mines, ports, tourism, a number of areas where there are impacts of varying points," Ms Wade said.  "The obvious and easy one is the impact agriculture has in terms of sediment run off.

"We're working very hard through a number of schemes funded by Federal and State Governments to improve water quality and minimise impacts of agriculture."

But Mr Miles insisted that while all industries have a role to play in reef protection, the Government was targeting agriculture for the right reasons. "We know that a clear driver of problems for the reef is run off pollution and a great deal is cause by agricultural land," he said.

"If we can substantially reduce the amount of sediment run off from just this one property we can move ourselves forward toward the targets we have set for the entire catchment and that's a huge opportunity."

Agforce Queensland general president Graham Mosley is concerned the Government will not follow through on proper land management of the station.  "It's a challenge. There's services associated with servicing that property ... ongoing maintenance," Mr Mosley said.

"What is the long-term plan here for acquisition of land in Queensland? Government needs to be clear of the path its embarking on when spending taxpayer money.

Mr Miles concedes the land management details have not yet been determined, while not ruling out a partnership with graziers. "In terms of the ongoing wider management, beyond the rivers and gullies and streams, that's where we're interested in working with partners to determine the best way to manage it going forward," he said.

"The idea is those areas which are currently grazed could well continue to be so under some kind of partnership arrangement, while those areas that are pristine could be protected as National Park, or nature refuges, while we get about the important work of repairing the riparian zones."

SOURCE






Volunteer firies vow to back PM

Darcy Zaina always wanted to be a volunteer firefighter. "I just reckon it's fun and I like being there for other people," the teenager told AAP on Thursday.

But the increasingly bitter battle between Victorian volunteer and career firefighters is taking its toll on her family.

Now her dad Jon is having second thoughts about letting his daughter work under changed union conditions. "I don't think I would encourage her to take it on because it's unfair," he said.

Mr Zaina was once a Labor voter but now he's changed his mind, and the Victorian volunteer firefighter believes about half a million votes in the state could go to the coalition in the politically-charged stoush.

"There would not be a volunteer I imagine that would not vote for Liberal now - I guarantee it."

Mr Zaina said the entire state was in uproar, with CFA members set to rally for the coalition in the election.

Thousands of voters are abandoning Labor in favour of the coalition over the CFA-unions dispute, volunteer firefighters such as Alex Batty have revealed. That was the message he relayed to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull during a meeting with the local CFA branch in the Liberal-held marginal seat of Corangamite on Thursday.

Mr Turnbull ramped up his language in the dispute, warning volunteers they were in the firing line of unions.

The government had won the fight against the road safety tribunal but unions wouldn't stop there. "You're next in their targets," he told the gathering.

Mr Turnbull said he normally would not make a political speech to volunteer groups such as the CFA, but there was a clear choice at the July 2 election against militant unionism.

He used the visit to reaffirm the coalition's pledge to amend the Fair Work Act to ensure volunteers have the freedom to carry out their duties.

SOURCE





Australian university students are being given 'trigger warnings' in class

At the start of lessons, lectures or subjects, academics are issuing warnings about sensitive or graphic content, giving students the opportunity to opt out if they feel confronted or uncomfortable.

University of Melbourne's Dr Lauren Rosewarne, a lecturer on gender and sexuality, told The Age she has been using trigger warnings in classes for the past 13 years of her career.

'It's like television ... you have a warning for everything from drug use to supernatural things, as a way to tell the audience that [they] may be disturbed by one of any number of topics,' she said.

'These students have grown up participating in politics through Tumblr and Instagram, and I feel that expressing ideas through sound bites and policing of other language, which is rampant online, has suddenly been translated into the classroom,' Dr Rosewarne added.

According to the Herald Sun, Melbourne's LaTrobe University Student Union has made it compulsory to provide warnings before talking about 57 separate potentially discomforting issues.

Those warning issues include 'gore', 'chewing', 'slimy things' and 'food' - on the basis they may 'negatively alter (the) wellbeing' of students.

Opponents of trigger warnings in universities complain the warnings limit educational growth and stop students from being challenged by new ideas.

Matthew Lesh, a research fellow at The Institute of Public Affairs, said he was worried Australian academics were feeling pressured to juggle the job of psychologist and educator.

'Universities should be about exposing people to as many ideas as possible, even if they are challenging,' he told The Age.

SOURCE






Daniel Andrews government fights flare-ups on many fire fronts

The dead weight of political recklessness is suffocating Daniel ­Andrews. The tall, stooped, ­slightly bookish Labor leader is just 19 months into his premiership of Victoria but he runs a state government crippled by its failure to consult and an addiction to a rust belt ­industrial-political framework that killed the previous Cain and Kirner Labor governments.

While outwardly the government’s problems are defined by its enterprise bargaining war with the state’s 60,000 volunteer fire­fighters, Labor’s challenges are in fact structural and have to do with a failure to communicate a ­broader economic narrative.

Such is the disconnect with the electorate that there is a deep concern among senior ministers that the Premier has killed the government or faces an unimaginable two-year battle to win back voter trust after scorching the firefighting volunteers lauded as heroes for helping to save hundreds of lives during the 2009 Black Saturday fire disaster.

Andrews’s leadership is not under imminent threat (only a handful of dissidents rally against him) but his medium-term challenges verge on the profound.

“If it’s like this in a year, then he is dead,’’ one senior figure tells The Australian.

To the firefighters dispute add these controversies: a wasted $1.1 billion of taxpayer funds after Andrews nixed the inherited ­Coalition East West Link road project, a social agenda fabled left-wing South Australian premier Don Dunstan would laud, plus the bungled delivery of suburban rail and regional trains. A storm of discontent is brewing.

Those who seek to define the Andrews government by a single dispute miss a more complex story of an administration as radical in its way as the Kennett Liberal government was in the 1990s, and certainly in a bigger rush to leave its mark than any Victorian Labor government since John Cain came to power in 1982.

While its narrative focuses on its social agenda, the Andrews government is engineering a large anti-congestion strategy that will lead, across time, to tens of billions of dollars of public transport and road infrastructure projects under­pinned by the strongest budget surpluses of any government. This includes $17bn worth of urban rail, including an $11bn underground rail network through the centre of Melbourne.

The Andrews government is not on its knees because it is lazy; it learned from the Coalition Baillieu government that the price of inaction is one term in office.

Rather, its problems seem to stem from the way Andrews has failed to transition to the premiership, despite his long-term ministerial positions under Steve Bracks and John Brumby.

Andrews, 46 next month, was considered one of the safest pair of hands Victorian Labor had produced in 20 years; today Bracks is said to be bewildered by the way Andrews is performing.

Andrews grew up in regional Victoria in a farm setting, yet he often seems to govern for the inner city and Trades Hall. Life in Wangaratta, in the state’s northeast, consisted of a Marist Brothers’ education, golf, helping to raise cattle and playing with his younger sister Cynthia.

Andrews is a creature of the Victorian Left who has done little beyond politics. When he left ­Monash University he worked as an adviser to Left powerbroker and federal MP Alan Griffin and was later elevated to ALP headquarters as an organiser and then assistant state secretary between 1999 and 2002.

Andrews is still considered factionally active, though he denies this. He does not have overt connections to a particular union but is sympathetic to Left-affiliated ­organisations such as the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union.

Outwardly cautious while health minister between 2008 and 2010, Andrews built a reputation under Brumby as a deeply serious young man trusted to deliver. Which he did. A core success of the Bracks and Brumby governments was that they kept the unions at bay and, when it came to social ­issues, trod carefully. Reformers, including attorney-general Rob Hulls, flew under the radar, keeping a lid on controversy by subversive rather than overt reform. The main social change — ­decriminalisation of abortion — became a cross-party cheek-slapping debate the night the reforms passed the parliament.

Contrast this with Andrews. His Facebook page is a hyper-­progressive echo chamber where the state’s dear leader is lauded by admiring commenters on issues such as medical marijuana, the Safe Schools sex education program and renewable energy, in a feel-good stream of consciousness discourse interspersed with pop culture references ranging from The Simpsons to The Lord of the Rings.

But with the exception of the promotion of transport projects, there is little to no economic narrative that drives the discussion. It is a savvy exercise in narrow casting, stepping around mainstream media gatekeepers in a way that appeals to young and inner urban voters who may drift into the arms of the Greens.

But even some within Labor are wondering if the tail has begun to wag the dog when it comes to the social agenda dominating government utterances in parliament and media conferences over the bread-and-butter business of state government ­service delivery.

“It’s not that the social agenda is bad, it’s that it is taking the available airspace from things that ­really matter to people such as jobs, infrastructure and education,’’ one senior Labor source says.

“That’s OK when you are doing well, but the moment you hit a crisis you have no stored credit in the bank.

“People might say, ‘This is bad, but they have got the runs on the board on the important stuff and I am willing to forgive a few mistakes.’ But if all you have is the social agenda — which often they don’t make the decisions about such as gay marriage or immigration — the politics of symbolism begins to take over.”

The source says even the more conservative ministers in the cabinet could live with the government’s social agenda (and support the good work the government has done on family violence) but “everyone” shakes their head that the government’s economic story is not told.

In some respects, the Andrews government has a good story to tell. There is an acceptance that the $6bn level crossings replacement program is a rare mix of good policy and politics. (Melbourne has a historical burden of hundreds of rail crossings intersecting busy roads, leading to considerable congestion and delays on the road and rail networks.)

The government is making good on its vow to build the Melbourne Metro rail tunnel and has partnered with toll road operator Transurban to deliver a second river crossing through the Western Distributor road project to ease congestion in the nation’s fastest growing suburbs.

And business is backing ­Andrews for continuing Victoria’s international engagement and drawing the state closer to China.

But these positives are negated by the $1.1bn cost of junking the East West Link. And a failure to properly engage Victorians about leasing the $6bn Port of Melbourne led to the opposition forcing a humiliating backdown on the government to secure opposition support for the privatisation. This episode is a symptom of a toxic ­relationship between the parties, which has led to parliament ­becoming dysfunctional in recent sessions. There is a visceral dislike between Andrews and Liberal leader Matthew Guy that sets the tone in the chamber.

But it is the Country Fire Authority dispute that has done more than anything to dent Andrews’s standing. The seeds for the disaster were sown when Andrews made the ill-fated decision in April to sideline emergency services minister Jane Garrett and meet directly with the United Firefighters Union’s ultra-militant leader Peter Marshall. Those who know Marshall say he’s someone who prefers a fight to a feed, and brawling was exactly what he was doing with Garrett.

At the 2014 state election, Marshall, along with his Ambulance Employees Association colleagues, had helped deliver Andrews government by refusing to negotiate with the Coalition government and then turning out members in droves to campaign for the ALP. But after a few sessions over the negotiating table with Marshall, Garrett was in no frame of mind to honour any perceived IOUs to the UFU and she bunkered down with the CFA and its volunteers in opposing the union’s push for control over the volunteer organisation.

In many ways, she was on the side of the angels. But once the row ended up in the Fair Work Commission, the UFU had a stroke of luck when conciliation was ­handed to former Australian Manufacturing Workers Union official Julius Roe. Roe staunchly defends his ­independence but the opposition accuses him of siding with the union by delivering recommendations that resembled the union’s claims with a bit of token verbiage around consultation.

It rapidly became apparent that Garrett would not back the proposed deal in cabinet. Earlier this month, Andrews returned from a trip to the US to his government in crisis. He sat down to negotiate with Garrett in what amounted to a game of chicken. Neither was prepared to give way and in the end the emergency services minister was given her marching ­orders. Since then ­Andrews has swept aside all remaining obstacles to ramming it through, installing his deputy James Merlino as Emergency Services Minister, firing the CFA board and jettisoning the ­organisation’s chief executive, ­Lucinda Nolan, a respected former senior policewoman.

Now the deal is on the verge of going through. But there’s no hiding the fact that the deal has enraged many of the CFA’s 60,000 volunteers, concerned about increasing union influence and the drop in response times the extra career firefighters will deliver in the urban fringe and regions.

The government’s sales job, sloppy as it is, may quell some anger in time for the 2018 election, but the damage to Andrews’s personal standing will be harder to ­repair. Back in the 2014 campaign ads he was styled as Everyday Dan, a mild-mannered family man lending a ready ear to ordinary Victorians’ woes. Of course, in truth Andrews has a ruthless streak — all successful politicians do — and it has been on display throughout the dispute.

The opposition accuses the Premier of bullying Garrett and Nolan out of their jobs. ­Andrews has talked a big game on bullying through his support for the Safe Schools program. But in the weeks before the dispute blew up, he surrendered the high moral ground when he was caught making a fat gibe in parliament directed at a Liberal MP.

The story itself was a one-day blip, curtailed by Andrews’s prompt apology. But the opposition is using it to ­develop a narrative around a “bullying” Premier drunk on his own power. Both parties know how effective this narrative can be — last time it was used it marked the end of Jeff Kennett’s reign. Andrews is no Kennett. But those who have been around Spring Street for a long time will know there are many similarities. Kennett was difficult to categorise and so is ­Andrews. One from the Right, one from the Left. But Kennett arrived in 1992 with ­unprecedented goodwill while Andrews was an accidental premier who profited from Coalition ­incompetence.

To suggest Andrews is on his own, however, is wrong. The broad Left faction has reaffirmed its support for him and one senior ALP figure points to Bill Shorten as a key factor in Andrews forcing the CFA dispute to a head. The story goes that Shorten, directly or indirectly, demanded that the UFU dispute be resolved before the federal election. This would explain why Andrews ­entered the debate carrying a chainsaw and wearing heavy-duty boots.

“Dan was happy for the dispute to run and run and run. It was Shorten who forced the issue,’’ an ALP source says. “The truth is he was doing Bill’s work and then Garrett blew us up. She completely overreacted and that’s why we are where we are.”

This version of events makes some sense. It would explain why a (generally) capable operator like Andrews entered the fray. Yet it is impossible to believe that Shorten would have sanctioned the way Andrews has done it, going to war with the people who helped save the state on Black Saturday.

This strategy bewildered some of the Premier’s strongest sup­porters. Andrews will be lucky to survive the fallout. The seats of Brunswick and Richmond in Melbourne’s inner north and east are under siege from the Greens and gains are hard to make given the rare clean sweep of the four bayside “sandbelt” seats in 2014.

ALP hardheads insist, however, that demographic changes will help Labor’s second-term chances, along with the natural “sophomore surge” that benefits many first-time MPs.

But never forget that Andrews is a groundbreaker. No premier has ever so recklessly picked a brawl with 60,000 firefighting volunteers to back a union mate and expect to win an election. On that political fire front, Andrews is a standout.

SOURCE

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





Friday, June 24, 2016



Bikini model takes on cops she says perved on her file



Attractive women sometimes find that their looks are a hazard and if Renee looks good in photos she looks even better in real life.  Her fight with the cops began when a piece of police slime named Donnelly tried to coerce her into sex.  But Renee has a will of steel and she never gives up. 

I am pleased to note that I contributed $5,000 to her courtroom battle that finally extracted a damages payment from the cops for Donnelly's behaviour.  Donnelly didn't have a fraction of her steel.  The stress of the matter saw him invalided out of the force even before the matter went to court.

But Renee is still going strong in her insistence on police integrity.  She is also helping corruptly prosecuted whistleblower cop Sgt Rick Flori



A FORMER bikini model turned justice crusader whose police file was accessed more than 1400 times has asked the Crime and Corruption Commission to investigate.

Renee Eaves is also demanding an explanation from Queensland Police Service.

Ms Eaves, who won a harassment payout for an unlawful arrest case in 2011, has been a fierce critic of the QPS over a number of scandals.

She launched a Freedom of Information request last month to find out how many times officers had accessed her QPRIME file.

Essentially an online folder of personal information, access to QPRIME files is confined to officers in the duty of their job.

Officers could access the information after pulling over motorists for traffic matters or when they attend addresses on domestic violence matters for instance.

Many people would go through their lives with their file being accessed only a handful of times.

However, Ms Eaves, who says she has been guilty of nothing more than a few traffic offences over the years, says it beggars belief that police would need to access her file more than 1400 times in the past 10 years.

Officers accessed her information a staggering 1435 times from 2006 until as recently as last month.
Renee Eaves was crowned Miss Bikini World in 1999.

In the past, investigations have been conducted when officers have accessed certain information on no more than a handful of occasions.

Ms Eaves has written to the head of the QPS Ethical Standards Command demanding an explanation.

“It’s abuse of public office,” she told The Courier-Mail. “They think that they can access my file whenever they like but they can’t. It’s a breach of privacy laws.

“They have taken action against one officer who accessed a file just once.

“They have accessed mine 1400 times so they are just taking the piss.”

She wrote to Police Minister Bill Byrne, whose office said he could not intervene but suggested she could lodge a complaint with the CCC, which she has now also done.

Ms Eaves said some of the state’s top lawyers had told her the situation was nothing short of disgraceful.

“I’ve been told that some hardcore bikies or hardened criminals would not have had their records searched as often as I have,” she said.

A former international bikini model, Ms Eaves was running a successful modelling agency on the Gold Coast when she was dragged from her home, heavily pregnant and arrested for an alleged traffic matter.

She took on the QPS for unlawful arrest and won a substantial payout.

SOURCE






Spate of carjackings in Melbourne by African APEX gang

Apex members are from South Sudan.  The "modus operandi" of the carjackings was similar in all cases

Carjackers have targeted two luxury car owners in Melbourne within 24 hours, stealing a Mercedes and an Audi.

In the second incident, a 23-year-old driver of an Audi was nudged from behind by a BMW in Malvern on Wednesday morning.

The Audi driver was assaulted with a crowbar when he got out of his car to inspect the damage. His attacker then stole the car and drove off, followed by the BMW.

Ambulance Victoria says the victim suffered upper body injuries and was taken to the Alfred Hospital. He remains in a stable condition.

In a similar incident on Tuesday morning, a 40-year-old was driving his Mercedes in Malvern East when it was repeatedly nudged from behind.  Three people attacked the Mercedes driver with a hammer when he pulled over to assess the damage. The group took the man's keys and made off with his car. He was taken to hospital in a stable condition.

Officers arrested a 16-year-old in relation to the car-jacking a few hours later.

Although detectives don't believe the two incidents are connected, there has been a spate of similar car-jackings in Melbourne in recent months.

Authorities believe the spike was due to improved car security which makes it much harder to hotwire and steal cars.

Police have previously linked some of the worst bumping incidents to the notorious Apex youth crime gang which have also been blamed for a spate of home invasions where keys were demanded and vehicles were stolen.

Recent carjackings in Melbourne include:

June 19 - An 87-year-old woman was pushed to the ground by a man while putting her walker into the car. He stole her keys and drove off with her car, almost running her over in the process.

June 15 - A compact SUV is stolen at gunpoint in Frankston.

June 14 - A man stole a Volkswagen Golf armed with a firearm after initially getting into the car and asking for a lift because he was cold.

SOURCE






Vulpine old bag out to ‘shape agenda’ for "Safe Schools" program into Marxist thinking



The research doyenne behind the controversial Safe Schools curriculum has spoken of “shaping an agenda” in order to attract support for the purported anti-bullying program — a bold ­admission ­likely to fuel concerns about a hidden ideological bent.

Emeritus professor Anne ­Mitchell, whose work with LGBTI communities helped spawn the program, has also ­revealed how early research into young people attracted to those of the same sex was purposely tied to a disease or public health issue to attract funding; initially HIV and later suicide.

“The early work I did in schools was all funded by youth suicide money,” Professor Mitchell told a Safe Schools ­Coalition event last month.

“People loved that — not gay people, but other people loved it. This was a great reason to spend money.”

According to audio leaked from the event, Professor Mitchell also said one of her team’s biggest successes was shifting the issue from the moral arena — given some religious schools would have been ­unlikely to sign on to a program that gave the appearance of supporting homosexuality — to a safety one.

“And schools were grateful of that; it made them feel safe,” she said. “It was a very successful way of shaping an agenda that could go forward at that time.”

Her comments, however, are likely to inflame debate about the Safe Schools program.

They have come to light after highly regarded school curriculum expert Ken Wiltshire ­entered the fray, voicing concerns about the outsourcing of controversial school subjects, such as religious studies and sex education, to “ideological interest groups’’.

“Governments should never outsource the development of curriculum content to interest groups, particularly those with an ideological purpose or ­agenda,” Emeritus Professor Wiltshire told The Australian. “We don’t want material creeping into the curriculum without it being quality ­assured.”

Not only has La Trobe University, through its Australian ­Research Centre for Sex Health and Society, steered much of the research behind Safe Schools, it has lobbied for policies to support LGBTI communities, ­including more inclusive sexuality education.

It now administers the taxpayer-funded Safe Schools ­Coalition Victoria program on the Victorian government’s behalf, with controversial Marxist activist Roz Ward at the helm.

Ms Ward, who was recently suspended for alleged misconduct, only to be reinstated a few days later, has publicly admitted that Safe Schools was not an anti-bullying program but ­rather a tool to promote gender and sexual ­diversity. Professor Mitchell, a founding member of the Australian ­Research Centre for Sex Health and Society, has previously ­said “we are still a way off schools ­actively celebrating the sexual ­diversity of their students”.

The Victorian opposition has pledged to replace the Safe Schools program, which is set to become compulsory in all government schools, with a comprehensive anti-bullying program.

SOURCE






Solar and wind power simply don’t work — not here, not anywhere

By Keith DeLacy, a former Labor treasurer of Queensland

One policy which seems to have escaped scrutiny during this election campaign is Labor’s commitment to increase the Renewable Energy Target to 50 per cent by 2030. I am surprised because it is a proposal that has enormous ramifications for economic growth and living standards, and disproportionate impacts on traditional Labor constituencies.

The problem we have in Australia is when we talk renewable energy we are talking wind and solar only — low value, expensive, unreliable, high capital cost, land hungry, intermittent energy.

According to the Department of Industry and Science wind currently generates 4.1 per cent and solar 2 per cent of Australia’s electricity. But even this is highly misleading because it is such low value power. You could close it down tomorrow (which it regularly does by itself) and it would make no difference to supply.

If we talk about total energy, as opposed to just electricity, wind and solar represent 1 per cent of Australia’s energy consumption. This despite billions of dollars of investment, subsidies, creative tariffs, mandates, and so on.

Solar and wind simply don’t work, not here, not anywhere.

The energy supply is not dense enough. The capital cost of consolidating it makes it cost prohibitive. But they are not only much more expensive because of this terminal disadvantage, they are low value intermittent power sources — every kilowatt has to be backed up by conventional power, dreaded fossil fuels. So we have two capital spends for the same output — one for the renewable and one for the conventional back-up. Are you surprised it is so much more expensive, and inefficient, and always will be? So wind and solar, from a large scale electricity point of view, are duds. Now I know that will send the urgers into paroxysms of outrage. But have you ever seen an industry that so believed its own propaganda. Note, when they eulogise the future of renewables they point to targets, or to costly investments, never to the real contribution to supply.

Let’s look overseas where many countries have been destroying their budgets and their economies on this illusion for longer and more comprehensively than we in Australia. The Germans are ruing the day they decided to save the world by converting to solar and wind. Germany has spent $US100bn on solar technology and it represents less than 1 per cent of their electricity supply.

Energy policy has been a disaster. Subsidies are colossal, the energy market is now chaotic, industry is decamping to other jurisdictions, and more than a million homes have had their power cut off.

It is reported electricity prices in Germany, Spain and the UK increased by 78 per cent, 111 per cent and 133 per cent between 2005 and 2014 as they forced additional renewable capacity into their electricity markets. Sunny Spain used to be the poster boy for renewables in Europe — photovoltaic cells and wind turbines stretching on forever. Now they are broke, winding back subsidies, even the feed-in tariffs which were guaranteed for 20 years. But wait, what about the green energy jobs that everybody gushes about? Spain has an unemployment rate of 21 per cent with a youth rate of 45.5 per cent.

Britain is little better. Subsidies are being wound back, and a Department of Energy report points out that in 2013, the number of households in fuel poverty in England was estimated at 2.35 million representing around 10.4 per cent of all households.

It is no better in the US either. States with renewable energy mandates are backtracking faster than Sally Pearson can clear hurdles. Ohio has halved its mandate level (it was 25 per cent by 2025) because of high costs. West Virginia has repealed its mandate because of high costs, and New Mexico has frozen its mandates. Kansas was repealing its mandate which reportedly would save ratepayers $171m, representing $4367 for each household, and so the dismal story goes on. The US Department of Energy has found electricity prices have risen in states with mandates twice as fast as those with no mandate. As of 2013 California was the only state to adopt a feed-in tariff for solar power. It was immediately dubbed a failure by the renewable energy community because it offered only 31 cents per kWh, only five times the rate for conventional base load power.

Ah, but Asian countries are jumping on the bandwagon. Maybe. China built one new coalfired power plant every week in 2014, and India’s coal-powered investment in that same year equalled the total electricity capacity of NSW and Queensland. To summarise — with all of the trillions spent worldwide on wind and solar, wind currently represents 1.2 per cent of global consumption of energy, and solar 0.2 per cent.

The good news, it is possible to reduce fossil fuel use in electricity generation — through hydro-electricity and nuclear fuel. Plenty of countries have done it — Canada 60 per cent hydro and 15 per cent nuclear; Sweden 45 per cent hydro and 48 per cent nuclear; Switzerland 54 per cent hydro and 41 per cent nuclear; France 11 per cent hydro and 79 per cent nuclear.

But Australia has zero tolerance of these two workable alternatives to fossil fuels. At least we are consistently inconsistent.

So where does that leave us? On the basis of evidence everywhere we could easily double the price of electricity and get nowhere near the 50 per cent target. What would that mean?

First, it means rapidly disappearing blue collar jobs in high energy industries like manufact­uring, car and ship building, smelting and refining, steel making and food processing. There may be still some construction jobs, but they will largely be assembly only, as all of the components will come from those countries more interested in growing the economy and eliminating poverty than stoking the warm inner glow. Make no bones about it, a clean green economy has no place for high-vis shirts.

Second, rapidly rising electricity prices and the subsequent increase in the cost of living, disproportionately affects those at the bottom of the income scale.

Policies like this are OK for the Greens. They can keep their virtue intact because they never have to deliver. As Gough Whitlam once said, only the impotent are pure.

Mainstream parties don’t have that luxury. They need to look at the true costs, and benefits, of all policy proposals.

SOURCE