Same-Old, Same-Old

Aussie Bush Fires (Again)

Every year when there are bush fires in Australia, the Greens sound off like a predictable dull metronome.  Whilst we are sure you don’t need to be reminded of their mindless mantras, we will provide a brief excerpt:

Greens leader Christine Milne has pointed to the fires in South Australia and Victoria to argue the Federal Government should do more to prepare for climate change. As firefighters battle blazes in the two states – and fears mount that dozens of homes have been lost – Senator Milne said the Government was failing to recognise the costs of global warming.  “Every year we are going to face these extreme weather events, which are going to cost lives and infrastructure, and enough is enough,” she said.  “The Abbott Government has to stop climate denial and help to get the country prepared to adapt to the more extreme conditions.”

It’s a reasonable assertion that Australian bush fires are not caused by climate change, since they have been happening for time immemorial.  (Unless, of course, “climate change” is just another term for weather, in which case, “climate change” is inevitable and natural and trying to stop it is eerily Canutish.)

As one blogger has pointed out, surprisingly enough, bush fires occur when there are high temperatures, high winds, and fuel. “Amazing”, as the Gruffalo said.
  Only the borderline insane would suggest that we should spend time trying to control temperatures and winds.  Fuel is where the focus should be.  As has been reported many times, controlled burn-offs in the cool months are the best way to control fuel and reduce the risk of bush fires in the summer.  It has worked successfully for decades past.  But no longer.  The Greens vociferously oppose such mitigation and preventative action.  They have captured local and state authorities to outlaw removing wood detritus from the bush, leading to a vast undergrowth build up of fuel .  Tinder dry.  Ready and waiting to ignite.

By continuing to resist controlled burn-offs the Greens are getting mighty close to being named as the great firebugs and passive arsonists of the present era. 

Better Than Neddie Seagoon and Eccles

You Could Not Make This Up

The Telegraph’s Tim Blair provides a list of “best quotations” heard or read in Australia over the past twelve months:

The Telegraph

Tim Blair

December 17, 2014

Presenting this year’s collection of notable quotables:

JANUARY
“Ah, well, ah, it, you know, it’s, ah, not, not for me, ah, to, ah, you know, determine how, ah, countries and individuals determine these issues.” – Having previously promised to “call out misogyny and sexism wherever I see it”, ex-PM Julia Gillard takes a different stance when asked about female representation in Middle Eastern politics.

“Do you believe Australian naval personnel or do you believe people who were attempting to break Australian law? I believe Australian naval personnel.” – PM Tony Abbott deals with claims that navy personnel deliberately burned asylum seekers.
 
FEBRUARY
“We regret if our reporting led anyone to mistakenly assume that the ABC supported the asylum seekers’ claims.” – ABC bosses Mark Scott and Kate Torney try to weasel out of their own network’s torture allegations.

“I love ABC.” – A letter from Melbourne girl Isabelle to Mark Scott after the six-year-old’s bake sale raised $40 for the billion-dollar broadcaster.

“I fully expect the ABC to be destroyed in all but name within a few years.” – A prediction from Fairfax’s Martin Flanagan.

“It’s not a betrayal of Islam. You don’t know what Islam is.” – Michael Adebowale, killer of British soldier Lee Rigby, after being told by a judge that he had betrayed his faith.
 
MARCH
“Here at The Drum website we are aware that, despite our best efforts, we have failed to achieve gender parity in our own editorial line-up.” – An editor’s note at the ABC’s Drum site.

“A gathering of the randomly but deeply aggrieved to give voice to the anger of people increasingly feeling themselves to be utterly powerless in the face of the social and political re-engineering of their country to serve the interests of powerful corporations and the true elites.” – Fairfax columnist John Birmingham supports the March in March movement.

“A suspect contacted an FGM helpline to request the procedure for his two daughters after misunderstanding the purpose of the service for victims.” – The BBC reports confusion over a female genital mutilation helpline.

“There’s a problem with my wife.” – Sydney man Yassir Ibrahim Mohamed Hassan’s emergency call after stabbing wife Mariam to death.
 
APRIL
“Did Nick give you a bottle of Grange when you became Premier?” – A question from the Daily Telegraph to Barry O’Farrell that led to the Premier’s resignation.

“This country is going to cook and people are going to die.” – Greens senator Scott Ludlam.

“World is fukt.” – A headline on the front page of the Australian Financial Review’s Anzac Day edition.
 
MAY
“The ABC gives life to those who care.” – Sign at a pro-ABC rally.

“The next time a woman dies at the hands of a violent partner and we read with trembling hearts that she could not get any legal help to stop that partner, we will be able to sheet the cause of death to Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey.” – Fairfax’s Jenna Price.

“When we do do those stories, there does tend to be a tremendous amount of lack of interest on the audience’s part.” – CNN president Jeff Zucker discovers that nobody cares about climate change.
 
JUNE
“China’s shift towards capitalism creates inequality and anger.” – The ABC’s unique analysis of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.

“There’s a feeling of joy.” – Wissam Haddad, head of Sydney’s al-Risalah Islamic Centre, following reports of mass murder carried out in Iraq by Islamic State extremists.

“Who is Australia’s craziest left-wing frightbat?” – An innocent poll question posted at your columnist’s website.
“Hi Tim. You will be excited to know that this survey has successfully moved you to the top of the list of people I’d like to see floating in a river, wrapped in plastic.” – One reader did not appreciate the poll.

“We can’t wait for governments to make this call. It’s time to act. A people’s revolution is required. Democracy is failing us.” – Fairfax columnist Elizabeth Farrelly.

“Honour killings are morally justified.” – Islamic extremist Uthman Badar’s planned speech for Sydney’s Festival of Dangerous Ideas, later cancelled because, as organisers put it, “the title has given the wrong impression of what Mr Badar intended to discuss.”
 
JULY
“So apparently the Australian Federal Police are looking for me – let’s see how well they can hunt. Have fun finding me.” – Australian jihadi fan Musa Cerantonio, shortly before he was arrested in the Philippines.

“We’re going to fight to raise the respect level for celebrities.” – Rapper Kanye West, better known as Mr Kim Kardashian.

“It will be remembered as one of the most ignoble moments in our history: On July 17, Australia became the first country to repeal a carbon tax.” – ABC host Julia Baird.
 
AUGUST
“I have become aware that Mike Carlton has corresponded with some Herald readers and letter writers using inappropriate and offensive language.” – Sydney Morning Herald editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir. Carlton later quit rather than be suspended.

 “Thats my boy!” – Australian jihadist Khaled Sharrouf rejoices over a photograph of his young son holding the head of a dead Syrian soldier.

“Keep them heads rolling.” – Sharrouf’s friend Mohamed Elomar joins in the fun.

“Our best defence is of course our cultured reason. Our tolerance. Our audacious confidence in the fundamental goodness of others.” – The ABC’s Jonathan Green solves terrorism.

“Beheadings occur routinely in Game of Thrones. And no complaint has been laid. Why then all the fuss?” – ABC favourite Bob Ellis following the taped slaughter of journalist James Foley.

“In NZ we are very worried about a potential influx of Australians, you know, escaping heat waves and lack of water and infectious diseases.” – University of Otago climate scientist Simon Hales.

“There was a culture of not wanting to rock the multicultural community boat, if I may put it like that. Perhaps, yes, as a true Guardian reader and liberal Leftie, I suppose I didn’t want to raise that too hard.” – Former Rotherham MP Denis MacShane following revelations of 1400 sexual torture cases in his electorate.
 
SEPTEMBER
“It demonises people.” – Greens senator Peter Whish-Wilson would prefer that we do not refer to terrorists as terrorists.

“Vale Mungo Macallum. Journalist and gentleman. His words and wit will outlive him.” – Feminist author Anne Summers sends Macallum to his grave, despite the author being very much alive.

“The police have come out very clearly and almost have said it’s all the young man’s fault.” – Islamic Council of Victoria secretary Graith Krayem after Numan Haider stabbed two policemen and was then shot.

“The beheadings, it’s an abhorrent act, don’t misunderstand me. But what about the British in Malaya in the 1950s?” – Ahlus Sunnah Wal Jama’ah Association of Australia spokesman Mustafa Abu Yusuf.

“A strong ABC is the centurion that guards this country.” – The ABC’s Peter Lloyd.
 
OCTOBER
“Clover Moore’s Sydney sits in Abbott’s Australia like an oasis of spring growth in a slag-heap.” – Fairfax columnist Elizabeth Farrelly.

“He transformed Australia and we are in his debt.” – Julia Gillard farewells ex-PM Gough Whitlam.

“As a woman coming into my eighteenth year, the fact that women were able to get the vote during Gough Whitlam’s reign …” – A North Sydney Girls High student on the ABC.
 
NOVEMBER
“Do you want death or do you want coal?” – Greens leader Christine Milne.

“My family has a poncho and it is really important to us.” – Sydney University’s Eden Caceda, whose opposition to a Mexican-themed staff party led to its cancellation.

“They planned their work day around their afternoon yoga class. They wore thongs and shorts to work, occasionally had a snooze on the couch after lunch.” – Louise Evans recalls her time at the ABC.

“People knew cuts were coming but we had no idea how bad it would be or that managers would be this sociopathic.” – An unnamed ABC staffer complains about cutbacks.
 
DECEMBER
“I’m fed up. My iPod doesn’t work any more here. I have to come back.” – War is hell for one French jihadist in Syria.

“There’s nothing planned or intended but we’re not ruling out industrial action.” – MEAA national secretary Christopher Warren warns of possible ABC strikes.

Panoptican Tony

With Friends Like This, Enemies Are Redundant

The phrase, Panoptican State refers to a real threat.  Sadly, the threat is coming not from terrorists, nor criminals in general, but from our governments.

As a result of the threat of terrorist crimes, Western governments want to transform the State into one which observes citizens at all times.  In Australia, Prime Minister Tony Abbott foolishly and recklessly wants the Parliament to approve collecting “metadata” on all Australians, storing it for up to two years.  “It will help us interdict and catch the malefactors,” says Tony.  Yes, and so would stationing a member of the intelligence service at our right shoulder, observing all we do and say, twenty-four seven. But would that justify the horrendous invasion of government power into our lives.  Tony says it would. 

Fairfax media have done us all a service.  With the assistance of a Liberal Senator, David Leyonhjelm they have demonstrated just how much information on all citizens will be available to government spies.  Leyonhjelm “turned over” his metadata to the analysts and what they learned about him was significant indeed.

The federal government says its controversial mandatory metadata storage proposal – which will force telcos and internet providers to store phone and web data on all Australians for two years – is necessary to fight serious crime. Prime Minister Tony Abbott described metadata, which will be available to law enforcement without a warrant if the Data Retention Bill becomes law, as “not the content of the letter, it’s what’s on the envelope”.

But a Fairfax Media investigation into what metadata can reveal has shown the envelope is almost transparent. If the bill passes it will represent a significant loss of privacy for all Australians, with law enforcement being able to derive far-reaching information and associations left behind by our digital footprints.

Here’s how they went about it.

Liberal Democrat senator David Leyonhjelm gave permission for metadata from his business address in Sydney’s inner west, an agribusiness consulting company, to be captured and analysed.  NCC Group, an information assurance firm with more than  15,000 clients worldwide, agreed to perform the analysis for Fairfax Media. It was overseen by its Asia-Pacific general manager, Wade Alcorn.

They used off-the-shelf software  to intercept all the data to and from the internet via a laptop plugged into the office’s internet router.  Using free online tools they stripped out about 99 per cent of what was captured, including the content of communications, and the industry-standard definition of web history – http and https traffic, which is all the data sent between your computer and the web server, including web addresses . Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has said, “The act will expressly exclude a person’s web browsing history.”

What did they learn about David Leyonhjelm?

Alcorn’s report reveals the surprising scope of what could be gleaned from the metadata generated by the office outside of its day-to-day dealings with meat and livestock organisations in Australia.  “The metadata revealed communication to an airlines booking system and to specific hotels in the Whitsunday Islands,” wrote Alcorn. “This may indicate that someone in the office will be travelling in the near future and planning to visit that area of the country.” . . .

“We’d sift through the data and look for interesting things,” he explained. “For example, with the airline booking site, we started expanding backwards and forward in time to reveal what other information there is on what the airline bookings might be about. At that stage we found information about the Whitsundays, hotel bookings, etc … it went from airline bookings to hotel bookings and associated holiday information.”

They found clues suggesting someone was buying furniture – communication to the webpage of a furniture retailer and a subsequent call of four minutes and 12 seconds to the same store. One day there was an interest in jewellery, home improvements and renovations.

Metadata can reveal someone’s hobbies or interests without the need to see the content of messages. There was communication in the office with mail servers relating to the Inner West Hunters Club, a NSW approved hunting club. Leyonhjelm is a high-profile supporter of the relaxation of gun laws.  NCC analysts referenced other email metadata with public information resources to infer communication with organisations involved in hunting, consultancy, market research and the sale of contact lists for marketing purposes.  Metadata could enable future governments to monitor people with agendas other than their own. The potential for inferring links between people, leading to further investigation, is vast.

Analysis of sender and recipient email addresses identified people who were often involved in group email discussions. Despite neither subject nor content of emails being available, some inferences could be drawn.  Alcorn wrote, “The email metadata collected was suggestive that there was a common political agenda. Taking the email addresses and searching for the people in Google determined they were active in various political arenas. From this information it was possible to find common agendas.”

One group email discussion possibly centred around pro-gun reform, with active lobbyists in the area taking part – something NCC analysts determined by putting specific email addresses into a search engine. Other members of the discussion weren’t public supporters of changes to gun laws.  “An analyst may, rightly or wrongly, infer from this metadata that the other members of the discussion are privately supporting gun reform and for some reason don’t want it publicly known,” wrote Alcorn.

Traffic volume showed when staff were in the office, when they were working late or at the weekend and for how long. Metadata showed consistent spikes of several minutes’ activity on Facebook at 9am, around lunch and just before 5pm. One afternoon there was no Facebook activity, which could suggest an early knock-off for the day.

Metadata also showed someone was exploring CTP insurance renewal, had used Dropbox – a way of transferring files too large to be emailed – as well as Microsoft, Apple, Nvidia, AVG and Avast technologies.
“We’re not using the most sophisticated tools to analyse metadata,” Alcorn said. “There are faster ways to do it and more automated and mature processes. We also didn’t use tools for displaying graphical connections. With further time and more sophisticated tools, more habits and details could be extrapolated.” . . .

And Leyonhjelm’s reaction to the results of analysing his metadata:

Leyonhjelm called the results of the analysis “very revealing”.  He had no problems with targeted retention of metadata via a warrant or court order based on suspected criminal activity. “But to collect that data on everyone – my 84-year-old mother and my wife and my next-door neighbours who wouldn’t say boo to a goose – it’s wrong in principle,” he said. . . .”The government’s basically saying we’re going to spy on everybody in the country,” said Leyonhjelm. “It’s appalling, it’s absolutely appalling.”

He added, “If you’re going to invade people’s privacy and treat them all like criminals-in-waiting, then to what extent do you do that? Malcolm Turnbull has said it’s nothing more than phone data, to and from and time and location, but it’s a lot more than that. I don’t see how it can be limited to that and I don’t believe it will be, either.”

The old slogan runs, “Give me liberty or give me death.”  Now, due to the craven lust to do evil that good may come, the Australian government has unwittingly provoked a new slogan: “Give me death rather than your kind of liberty.”  Or, more tellingly we suggest to Australian citizens that they face up to the Prime Minister and his conspirators and say, “Stop being such cowards.” 

It is a small mercy that in order to “get the power” to store everyone’s metadata and take a huge stride towards a Panoptican State, Parliament gets to debate it in public and vote upon it.  Let’s hope there is a rebellion in the government’s parliamentary ranks. 

Letter From Australia (About Trotskyite Sydney University)

Orwell Would Weep at the Demonisation of Professor Barry Spurr 

Miranda Devine

The Sunday Telegraph
November 16, 2014

I MUST assume Eden Caceda is an inspired satirical creation by Sydney University students outraged at the brutalisation of poetry professor Barry Spurr. 
 
After all, the anagram of the name is “A Decadence”. That’s one way of looking at the descent into Orwellian thought-control at the nation’s finest university, which has suspended Spurr indefinitely and banned him from campus for using “offensive” language in private emails, which he said had been hacked and sent to a left-wing website.

“Eden Caceda”, an office-bearer with the university’s “Autonomous Collective Against Racism”, ho, ho, led the campaign last week against Vice-Chancellor Michael Spence’s “racist” Mexican-themed staff Christmas party.  The dress code was “Mexican Fiesta — bring your own sombreros and ponchos”.  But “Caceda” was deeply ­offended by the “culturally ­insensitive” invitation.  “My family has a poncho and it is really important to us, and these people are treating it like a costume,” he said.

Spence, who made the decision to render Professor Spurr a non-person, now finds himself hoist with his own petard.  He has been forced to send an email to staff, cancelling the Mexican dress code: “I have today asked the event organisers to amend our plans so the party has no particular theme.”

You really couldn’t make this stuff up.

Cowardly capitulation to political correctness only ends when the barbarians are pouring molten silver down your throat. But Spence deserves everything to come, because his treatment of Spurr is a shameful disgrace.  It dishonours everything that a great university is supposed to be. Rather than exalting reason and truth, it is prosecuting Crimethink — banishing people for having private thoughts.

Spurr wrote some of his private thoughts in jocular emails to a friend in which he refers to “Mussies”, “chinky-poos” and “whores” and describes the university’s chancellor, Belinda Hutchinson, as an “appalling minx”.  New Matilda has published some of the stolen emails, while the university conducts a top-secret and extremely slow “investigation” into whether they constitute evidence of closet racism, sexism, misogyny, Islamophobia etc.

Spurr said the comments were not serious, but part of a “whimsical linguistic game” in which he and a friend tried to outdo each other with extreme language. Any literate person would understand this boundary transgression. Yet one of the few people to speak up for Spurr lives in London.  “How could anyone take such deliberate touretting seriously?” wrote comedian Barry Humphries, asking if Australia has “gone slightly mad”.

You might have thought that students would rise up in fury and condemn the disgusting treatment of a good man.

Professor Barry Spurr.

But, alas, the only student protests have been by the campus Trotskyists, Socialist Alternative, who shrieked through megaphones outside Fisher ­Library that Spurr was “racist filth” and a “vile bigot” and gathered signatures to have him sacked.

In the days after Spurr was driven out, his fellow ­professors read aloud the ­administration’s ritual denunciation of him before every class, urging students who may have experienced discrimination to come forward.

Spurr is Australia’s only poetry professor. He is the world’s pre-eminent T.S. Eliot scholar. His CV, which has not yet been erased from the university’s website, shows a man of extraordinary literary and academic accomplishment. Students come from across the world just to be in his classes.  Most are dismayed by his banishment, but are so ­oppressed by the McCarthyist atmosphere on campus that they daren’t speak out.

Michael Davis is one brave exception. In a brilliant article in next month’s Quadrant, the 20-year-old blasts the university for “caving to the efforts of 100 caustic teenagers who insult and abuse a 60-something year-old who’s given the better part of his life to that same institution. There would be no University of Sydney without men like Barry Spurr, and there would be no Australia without the Western Civilization he defends.”

Of course, the reason Spurr was marked for destruction was because he helped in the Abbott government’s review of the national curriculum, recommending greater emphasis on the Western literary canon.  Along with review co-author Kevin Donnelly and four other subject experts deemed “conservative”, he has been monstered by the authoritarian Left who control education.

He agreed to help fix the curriculum because he believes English studies are in crisis. He believes democracy is under threat when its people are “inarticulate in their use of language and sub-literate in their linguistic discernment”.

Spurr has devoted his life to eradicating the sort of slovenly, deceitful, politically correct language that “makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts”, as Orwell put it.

Now he is its victim.

Pederasty’s Easy Facilitation

Evil is Never Static

The Sydney Morning Herald has carried a piece about pederasty facilitated by misuse of the Internet.  The core of the piece reveals not just the extent of the crime, but the sophistication of its perpetrators. 

A special police taskforce has discovered the number of sex offenders who target children in in Australia has been wildly underestimated and local paedophiles have set up secure online sites to share intelligence on how to trap victims.  Deputy Commissioner Graham Ashton says police are shocked at the number of active offenders operating in Victoria. “There are hundreds and hundreds. We have found some terrible stuff that would keep you awake at night,” he told Fairfax Media.

He said Taskforce Astraea is conducting 120 separate investigations and has rescued 40 children in Australia and offshore who had been targeted by paedophiles.   The taskforce began by using computer software to identify encrypted child pornography images but soon discovered many offenders move quickly from “passive” observers to aggressive molesters.
Astraea has found:

• Pay-for-view sites where children are abused and in some cases tortured.
• Teenage girls in Melbourne are being blackmailed for sex by adult offenders.
• Secure chat rooms where offenders discuss methods to groom children and tips to avoid detection.
• Elaborate internet stings designed to trap vulnerable teenagers.

Astraea investigations reveal offenders trawl sites until they find someone they feel can be exploited and make contact pretending to be a person around the same age.  They then introduce a second fake character who bullies the victim on line. The offender then steps in to “protect” the target to win affection. “They then share some images and the hooks are in,” Mr Ashton said.  “He says he will tell friends and parents unless we meet. We have had kids climbing out the window at 2am to meet a paedophile.”

He said most adults are unaware of the internet threat to their children. “Parents can be downstairs watching Family Feud while their teenage daughter is chatting to a notorious paedophile online in the bedroom upstairs.  They are sharing intelligence online and educating each other by saying, ‘This works, this doesn’t, don’t do this or you will be caught’.”

Depravity, whilst common to all, is never static in the human soul.  It is either growing or diminishing, waxing or waning.  When lust takes over, its servants will be found working industrially to satiate their slaked thirst.  More and more extreme perversions will be required to satisfy their spiritual, mental, and bodily cravings.

Some takeouts:

1. The dominant materialistic world-view and its hand-maiden evolutionism has no firm ground upon which to fight such evils–which is to say that modern Western society does not really believe in the existence of evil.  Evil is nothing more than an irritant to the machine  All if requires is the application of fragrant grease–other people’s money–and the evil will wane. The machine will run smoothly again.  Whenever modern society arises to combat an extreme form of wickedness, such as pederasty, it is compromised and dilatory from the outset.  Materialism and evolutionism do not believe in the existence of absolute evil.  It does not believe in the existence of Satan.  Worse, it ridicules the idea as primitive and superstitious.

2. Parents who allow their children unsupervised and unregulated access to the Internet and mobile phones are beyond irresponsible.  They are themselves complicit in immorality.  Might as well be completely permissive and allow their children liberty and license to wander the streets of red-light districts unaccompanied into the early morning hours. 

3.  Modern technology-besotted Western culture has worshipped at the feet of the great IT idol.  Parents have been repeatedly told that their children will not succeed in the coming generation unless they are utterly conversant with IT devices of every kind and their deployment and application.  Never has a generation of parents been so enervated and enfeebled; never has a generation of parents agreed that they are inadequate to prepare their children for effective adult like; never has a generation of parents been so emasculated in their own minds.

4.  Complicit in this mass stupidity is the statist educational establishment, which, having failed to teach children how to read and write in its academies of “learning”, has sought to deflect criticism by category revision: education no longer is about reading, writing, and maths and their derivatives.  All that is passée.  IT is the new real.  Children go to school to learn how to text and develop Facebook capabilities.  Any parent who subjects children to antediluvian pre-occupations with the 3-R’s is coming close to child abuse.  No classroom, unless it is replete with laptops, tablets, i-phones, and intranets, is worthy of the name.

5.  If we, as a culture, do not swallow our craven pride, turn from our evil ways, and repent of our sins, seeking the Lord’s mercy and forgiveness, it will get worse.  If it had been argued in the 1960’s that within fifty years, children would be being groomed and manipulated by adults into sexual perversion on an industrial scale, they would have been dismissed as an idiot.  If we do not humble ourselves, the next fifty years will see far, far worse.  Evil is never static.  It is either being itself eviscerated, or it will be growing in strength to where it will disembowel a society.  “We have had kids climbing out the window at 2am to meet a paedophile,” while their “parents are downstairs watching Family Feud,”  just about says it all.

Australian Muslim Leaders Speak Up

Waddling Like a Duck

Newspaper columnist, Andrew Bolt calls our attention to a recent proclamation by Australia’s “leading Muslims”.  They were objecting to the current policy settings of Australia towards Israel, Hamas, and Australian citizens who have gone to the Middle East to participate in the Islamic jihad.

The signatories include “moderate Muslims” as well as more radical types.  “Moderates” are represented by

academics, the Australian Muslim Women’s Association, the Canberra Islamic Centre and numerous university Islamic societies.

Ok, then.  But here comes one of the more revealing protestations:

We also reject government attempts to divide the Muslim community into ‘radicals’ and ‘moderates’

So, the Australian Muslim community is actually one homogeneity.  It does not consist of “radicals” and “moderates”–by its own testimony.  What are we to make of this?
  Bolt’s response is:

This is disastrous. The West has indeed tried to make just that diplomatic distinction to allow us to fight the extremists without alienating “moderate Muslims”.  Now 80 Muslim representatives tell us they reject that division. Touch a radical and we attack all Muslims.

Our response is to point out the other horn of the dilemma implied in the statement.  The necessary implication from the testimony of Australian Muslims own leadership is, touch any supposed moderate Muslim and you finger an actual radical.

The effete liberal anti-hate speech brigade by now will be looking just-ever-so-slightly foolish.  Their distinction between true Muslims (that is, ostensible lovers of the Religion of Peace) and Islamist extremists just went down the tubes–at the insistence of Islamic leaders in Australia.  They are all the same, apparently. 

“No, no, no!” say the effete liberals.  These moderate Islamic folk have been driven to stand with the extremists as a result of all the hate speech they have endured in recent years.  To which we reply, if it waddles like a duck, looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . . it’s a duck.  The burden of proof to the contrary is on the “duck”. 

Australia Rights the Ship

Refugees, the Australian Government and Christian Basics

The Australian government has shown the way when it comes to the vexed question of immigration.  Things have been scandalous, prior to the election of Tony Abbott’s Liberal Coalition to government.  Australia was beset by boatloads of economic migrants, mainly via Indonesia, landing on its shores demanding refugee status, together with all the entitlements attached.  Genuine refugees were squeezed out.

The Commentariat, and the Left in particular, had long employed a faux guilt and pity approach which framed  turning the boats back to be completely reprehensible, cruel, unthinkable–and so forth.  Anyone who even suggested such heresy was pilloried immediately as a moral monster.  You know the drill.  But how times have changed–and quickly.  Miranda Devine takes up the narrative:

AN extraordinary graph ­nestled in a press release issued today by Immigration Minister Scott Morrison encapsulates the humanitarian triumph of the government’s border protection policies. 
 
It shows two lines, one red and one blue, heading in ­opposite directions, from 2007 to 2014. Each trajectory is a mirror image of the other. When red goes up, blue goes down, and vice versa. This is the calculus of human misery.

Red represents the refugee places bestowed by Labor on “irregular maritime arrivals” — asylum seekers who arrived by boat. From nothing in 2007 to a peak of 5000 at the height of the madness in 2012-13.  The blue line represents the number of “special humanitarian” visas awarded to genuine refugees waiting offshore in desperate circumstances. The people waiting in a queue we kept being told didn’t exist.  Now that the Abbott government has all but stopped the boats, the queue is moving again. And so the blue line of offshore refugee visas will hit a record high of 5000 this year.

These are the most persecuted people on the planet, Iraq’s Christians and Yazidis who have been driven out of their homes, children catatonic with fear, after escaping the unspeakable barbarism of ­Islamic State psychopaths.  If you want to know what a refugee looks like, see the long lines of distraught humanity picking their way on foot in near 50C heat across the rocky slopes of Mount Sinjar in northern Iraq. Yazidis, like Christians, are a religious minority under mortal threat from IS terrorists who have captured large swathes of Syria and Iraq in the past two months. . . .

Thanks to Morrison’s success in wresting back control of our borders from people smugglers, Australia is in a position now to give at least some of those refugees a lifeline.  He has announced that 4400 refugees from Iraq and Syria, including Christians and Yazidis will be resettled in Australia this financial year. Morrison describes this as the “humanitarian dividend” of strong border protection policies, permanent resettlement in Australia for those “who would have otherwise had their places taken by illegal boat arrivals under the previous government”.

This financial year 11,000 of the 13,750 places in the annual humanitarian intake will be given to desperate people overseas, including 6000 places for refugees identified by the UN, and 5000 for refugees who have close family living in ­Australia. This is testament to Australian generosity and compassion, which have been so maligned by ­alleged refugee advocates.

Because the government has shut down the faux refugee inflow, it is now able to concentrate upon re-settling genuine refugees.

Of course this in no way is meant to condemn the initiative or ambition of the economic refugees.  Most come from impoverished circumstances.  They are seeking a better life for themselves and their children.  In their straightened circumstances they are easy prey to the human-smugglers who sell them the “dream” of a better life in Australia if they pay passage on a rickety boat. The immorality here lies with the people-smugglers who misrepresent the truth and exploit the poor with false promises and deceitful blandishments. 

Sadly there are people in far worse circumstances than these economic migrants.  As Devine points out, Australia is now concentrating upon the genuine refugees.  What has made this possible? A firm, but consistent line by the Australian authorities, turning back boats of pseudo-refugees, the economic migrants.  The message soon spreads, leaving the people-smugglers exposed and out to dry.  This is a lesson the US might find useful.

All of this presents a welcome challenge to Christ’s servants.  Refugee migrants are often the hardest to assimilate into a culture because of the dislocation, coupled with the shock and horror of their circumstances.  Consider for example the difficulties of helping Yazidis integrate who have long centuries of religion, culture, and practice built around, and linked to, a specific geographical location in Iraq, from which they have now been wrenched.  To them, Australia will be a very alien land.  On top of this, will be the horror of what they have recently witnessed and experienced.

Integration will not be easy.  To be successful, above all, will require human-to-human contact, not human-to-bureaucrat officialdom contact.  Smiles, genuine friendliness, helpfulness, and servanthood in all the “little things” of life.  Cherishing people.  Taking care of them.  Once more, we know the drill.  These are the things which Christ’s servants can excel at doing and being.

Neighbourliness is a fundamental Christian ethic, for are we not commanded to love our neighbour as ourselves?  Even Samaritans.

Two Very Different Houses

Economic Literacy in Oz, Ignorance in NZ

New Zealand appears to have a strong streak of xenophobia.  It also can be characterised as excelling in economic and commercial ignorance.  These things tend to come out especially during election campaigns, but they are always there, simmering away just beneath the surface, waiting to break out like a bad case of acne. 

One traditional cause célébré is residential housing and whether New Zealanders can afford it.  Prices are rocketing up in some locations (Auckland, Christchurch) bringing forth pronouncements of doom. 

But attitudes across the ditch appear to be very different.  House prices have ratcheted up in that country as well, particularly in Sydney and Melbourne.  And, more to the point, the  presence of strong Chinese demand is having a significant impact.  In New Zealand, a similar phenomenon has produced xenophobic reactions against Chinese immigration and house-buying.  Not so in Oz–at least not in the Sydney Morning Herald, which is hardly a denizen of right wing, pro-business, free market economics.

House hunters may complain, but the “phenomenal” influx of Chinese money into the local residential property market may be the best thing that happened to the local economy as it struggles to make its difficult transition from an unprecedented mining boom.

The demand from foreign investors for Aussie bricks and mortar is set to intensify for at least three years, driving a boom in apartment construction activity and boosting the bottom lines of listed companies such as Lend Lease, Mirvac and Goodman Group, according to exhaustive new research by broking group CLSA.  And while there have been plenty of warnings about foreign investors pushing property prices beyond the reach of a generation of local prospective homeowners, Chinese investment may be the catalyst for growth in a non-mining corner of the economy – building and construction – that traditionally is a strong generator of employment. . . .

China is already the number one source of source of foreign money in the local real estate market, and anecdotal evidence suggests that that position has only strengthened this year. Sydney and Melbourne have overwhelmingly been the destinations of choice. . . .

Existing regulation, administered via the Foreign Investment Review Board, restricts non-residents to new properties. There is anecdotal evidence that these rules are circumvented to illegally allow foreign capital into established properties, but the extent of that is hard to estimate, says CLSA senior analyst Andrew Johnston.  But Johnston concedes that “there will be some Australian residents that are homebuyers that get displaced from buying a new apartment due to price, such that second-hand apartments become relatively more attractive”.  While the news is mixed for some home buyers, it’s great news for the bottom lines of the country’s biggest listed property developers – and potentially their shareholders.

Around about now, in New Zealand, howls of outrage would be heard condemning monied interests profiting from the discontent of the less advantaged.  And at the same time, out of the other side of the mouth, shrill calls will be made about the need for New Zealanders to save an invest more–in listed companies–to prepare for their older age years. 

 

Go figure.  Australia at this point is far more advanced and discerning.  New Zealand remains locked in an ancient iron mask of socialist egalitarianism.  It’s what happens when the entire statist education system is bent toward reinforcing the idea that everybody and everything “owe me, big time.” 

Letter From the UK (About Australia)

Australia Repeals its Hated Carbon Tax

James Delingpole

17 Jul 2014, 
Breitbart UK

Australia has become the first country in the world to abolish its hated carbon tax – in fulfillment of an electoral “pledge in blood” by Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

The tax was introduced by the Labor-Greens coalition in mid-2012, despite earlier promises to the contrary by then Prime Minister Julia Gillard.  Prime Minister Abbott described the tax – estimated to have cost every Australian household $550 per year – as “useless and destructive.” It has now been repealed, after much wrangling – and only on the third attempt – by the Australian senate.

As Phillip Hutchings reports at Watts Up With That?, the tax was indeed a total waste of time and money.
Among the reasons it was so misbegotten are:

The sanctimoniousness of such a tax in Australia is breathtaking. We are an energy heavy-weight, the world’s largest exporter of coal. Soon we will also be the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas. At the same time as our Labor prime ministers were being successively culled by infighting over the carbon tax, the world’s biggest oil & gas companies were directing more than two-thirds of global investment in LNG production into Australia, the biggest investment boom ever in this country.

We are an economy built on the world’s hunger for fossil fuels. Yet with our gas and coal sources being either offshore or in remote locations, these vital export industries are mostly hidden from Australian voters.

The carbon tax itself was a lightweight. The theory underlying a carbon tax is to provide a long term price signal to drive a change in the industrial and consumer behaviour. On this score, the Australian tax was doomed to failure. After all, politically it had to appeal to the latte-sipping lefties, but without affecting their wallets.

To minimise the economic fall-out, the Labor-Green Government limited the carbon tax to large industrial emitters (more than 25,000 CO₂e/yr). Road transport and agriculture was exempt. Put together, that meant only about 185 companies in Australia’s US$ 1.5 trillion economy had to comply. And even those few were only lightly touched.

Industries which are “trade exposed” such as cement or aluminium smelting were mostly excused. They got either 66% or 94.5% of their carbon cost covered by the award of free units.

Just over one-third of Australia’s carbon emissions come from coal-fired electricity generators. And the dirtiest electricity comes from the aging brown-coal plants in Victoria – with almost double the emissions of modern gas-fired plants. Yet being located in a Labor-voting union heartland, they too got off lightly with the first half of their emissions effectively carbon- tax free. Nice.

3. It did little, if anything, to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Guardian, of course, claims otherwise. But this is greenie wishful thinking. As Hutchings notes, though greenhouse emissions in Australia have been declining for almost eight years (long before the carbon tax was introduced) this has much more to do with the doubling of electricity prices, which caused consumers to cut back drastically on their consumption. This is exactly what the carbon tax was supposed to do (drive up prices; change consumer habits) but it had already happened naturally so the tax was pointless.

Other countries to have experimented with either a carbon tax or an emissions trading scheme (which instead of taxing carbon dioxide directly, imposes a ceiling on CO2 production through tradeable permits) include the European Union member states, Japan and Korea.  

False Prophets

A Prescient Judge Points the Way

A judge in Downunder has caused discombobulation and outrage at his suggestion that there is nothing principially wrong with incest.  That incest should be advocated from the bench ought not be surprising to Christians.  When secular humanism becomes the regnant religion, anything that can be done will be done–and will likely be endorsed and approved.  The reason is that the ethic of secular humanism runs, “I am the master of my fate; man is the measure of all things; nothing human is foreign or absolutely wrong.” 

When this ethic is applied consistently to sexual mores nothing is implicitly forbidden.  Explicit prohibitions are ignorant, primitive, time-bound prejudices and subject to change by the next more-enlightened generation.  We are in the middle of just such a sea change.

The secularists are actively pushing the boundaries.  But The Daily Telegraph in the land of Oz has been so outraged, it has called for a judge to be sacked. Why?  Because the judge has suggested that there is nothing wrong with incest, only sexual and physical mechanics which can easily be controlled.

BEYOND their role as legal arbiters, judges are supposed to offer a form of moral framework around the laws they work with. Their remarks from the bench are a broader guide to society’s proper functioning.  That is the intention. District Court Judge Garry Neilson’s comments on incest, however, run contrary to any civilised moral code.

Here is what Neilson had to say, during an April trial that has only recently been reported: “A jury might find nothing untoward in the advance of a brother towards his sister once she had sexually matured, had sexual relationships with other men and was now available.”

Neilson said the “only reason” incest is still a crime is because of the risk of genetic abnormalities: “But even that falls away to an extent (because) there is such ease of contraception and ready access to abortion.” In almost any context, these comments are utterly indefensible. Neilson’s remarks were made during the case of a man ­alleged to have repeatedly raped his younger sister in the 1980s.

To say that Neilson has stepped outside the accepted boundaries of a judge’s role would be to severely understate matters. There is no possibility of explaining away or rationalising these comments. He should be stood down immediately.

The paper charges Neilson with breaching “civilised moral codes”.  What, we inquire is a “civilised” moral code?  Does it prohibit abortion?  No, of course not.  That’s perfectly acceptable.  Does it proscribe no-fault divorce?  Not at all.  A civilised moral code protects the “right” to abort, and permits and facilitates divorce on grounds as frivolous as both parties mutually deciding to split apart. Why should incest be so sacrosanct, since both abortion and divorce trade upon human volition and doctrines of made-up-human rights. If humans want anything, in principle it’s OK, because “nothing human is foreign or alien to us”.

Rather than breaching any civilised moral code, abortion on-demand and divorce on-demand are regarded as the hallmarks of civilisation today.  Why then the umbrage taken over incest?  The reality is that within the secularist world-view “civilised moral codes” are perfectly circular entities.  Whatever the law code endorses is “civilised” by its presence in the code.

But if the paper is appealing to some overarching moral code that holds all humanity to account and before which we will all be judged when the editors condemn such perversions, pray tell us what it is.  Where can this code be found and what are its precepts?  Secular humanists and evolutionists–the high priestly cast of our society–have none, at least none that are arguable or defensible.

Rather, the prevailing culture of secularist Unbelief rightly should lionise Neilson and promote him, if secularism is to be consistent and taken seriously.  And in the end it will.  Judge Neilson is true believer, an apostle of the established religion of the day, an enlightened and principled man.

In truth, however, those who sow to the secularist wind, will inherit the divine whirlwind, and thus progressively destructive tornadoes are sweeping across our culture and civilisation.  God is giving up our particularly perverse “civilisation”.   He will not be mocked–thankfully.  

Mockery the Best Medicine Now

The Wonderland of Oz and Other Places

We are all aware of the intellectual disingenuousness with which the global warming crusade has been conducted.  At the hands of UN and media propagandists, “global warming” was morphed into “climate change” so than any variability in climate could be claimed as “evidence” of the earth warming.  Colder temperatures thus became “proof” that global warming was actually occurring.  This has led to the perturbing situation we have at present.  Despite no rise in global temperatures for the past 16 years that very phenomenon is evidence of climate change, aka, global warming. 

In that perverse disingenuous spirit, we now present the latest evidence of global warming to alarm all men everywhere.

Firstly, the the whacky land of Oz, which boasts yellow brick roads, talking tin men, and other curiosities:

If you are lucky enough to be reading this from the comfort of your blankets, it might be best to stay there, as Brisbane has hit its coldest temperatures in 103 years.  
 
Not since July 28 1911 has Brisbane felt this cold, getting down to a brisk 2.6C at 6.41am.
At 7am, it inched up to 3.3C.  Matt Bass, meteorologist from BOM, said the region was well below our average temperatures.

“If it felt cold, that’s because it was, breaking that record is pretty phenomenal for Brisbane,” Bass said.  “The average for this time of year is 12C, so Brisbane was about 9C below average, it is pretty impressive really, to have the coldest morning in 103 years is a big record.”  The coldest place across the state was Oakey which got down to -6.1C, which was the coldest temperature for the town since 2011.  [The Australian.]

Secondly, in Antarctica, the lack of melting ice is becoming a concern.

Coldest Antarctic June Ever Recorded

Posted on July 12, 2014 

By Anthony Watts

Story submitted by Eric Worrall
Antarctica continues to defy the global warming script, with a report from Meteo France, that June this year was the coldest Antarctic June ever recorded, at the French Antarctic Dumont d’Urville Station.

According to the press release, during June this year, the average temperature was -22.4c (-8.3F), 6.6c (11.9F) lower than normal. This is the coldest June ever recorded at the station, and almost the coldest monthly average ever – only September 1953 was colder, with a recorded average temperature of -23.5c (-10.3F).  June this year also broke the June daily minimum temperature record, with a new record low of -34.9c (-30.8F).

Thirdly, the US mid-west is enjoying a spectacularly hot summer (not) this year:

Forecasters say the U.S. could see some extreme weather next week – thanks to “a giant trough in the jet stream” expected to dip down from Canada, according to CBS Boston chief meteorologist Eric Fisher.  It’s expected to happen starting Sunday in the Upper Midwest, then keep digging into Tuesday across the central and eastern portions of the nation.

What would that mean?  Very cool air for July taking over the middle and eastern U.S. with 60s and 70s for highs, lots of 40s and maybe even some 30s for lows near the Canada border.  And a lot of stormy weather – possibly severe – Monday and Tuesday in particular, with a heavy rain threat for the East that may pan out Tuesday and Wednesday with a flash flood risk.

“This is a pattern very similar to what we saw all winter,” Fisher said. “It really hasn’t gone anywhere since then – just a few interruptions here and there, but it keeps re-establishing itself.”  [CBS NewsJuly 11, 2014]

All of this, we submit, is evidence of global warming taking place before our very eyes.

Thus, the words of Al Gore, prophet of climate change and inventor of the Internet, provide the right interpretive context to the evidence above:

“We’re way past time where it’s responsible for any national leader to reject the science behind the climate crisis,” Mr Gore said.  [BBC News]

Merely rejecting the “science” behind the climate crisis is way too timid a response.  Now it needs to be not just rejected, but booed and mocked off the stage.  Let’s institute a Day of Mockery and Mickey-taking (“DMM”) for the “science behind the climate crisis”.  It will be far more fun than the “turn-off-the-lights Earth Day” whose own lights are growing dimmer and dimmer in the freezing Brisbane cold. 

Death Valley

Can These Bones Live?

The roots of our rapid devolution from public and official Christianity in the West to radical secularism are fascinating to trace.  You can take a long bow, a short bow or a medium bow vista.  All are valid to some degree.

The “short bow” view traditionally commences with the sixties as the beginning of a time of rapid change: the Beatles, the pill, no fault divorce, secular feminism, a rapid expansion of a vast government income re-distribution system, the legalisation of killing unborn children on a mass industrial scale, the official promulgation of evolutionism as a religious certainty–to name but a few of the many devolutionary milestones–with the result that the West is now in a place which few foresaw when John Lennon and his mates boasted they were more popular than Jesus Christ.  Today the West is engaged in furious debates over whether homosexuals can legitimately be married, whether incest and pederasty should be classified as human rights, and how many genders there are.  As Theoden of Rohan once said, “How did it come to this?”  No doubt many folk today who were alive in the fifties are likewise shaking their heads in astonishment at the devastation wreaked upon the law and culture and religion which had stood unassailable for centuries. 

The causes of such a rapid and comprehensive devolution are complex to be sure.  But we suggest that one precipitous factor was the most widespread religion of the day.
  This particular religious faith is presented cogently in the following profession of faith which appeared in a Melbourne newspaper in 1959 just as the Beatles were coalescing into a “group”.  The occasion was the Billy Graham crusade in that city, and a correspondent wrote:

After hearing Dr. Billy Graham on the air, viewing him on TV, and reading reports and letters concerning him and his mission, I am heartily sick of the type of religion that insists that my soul (and everyone else’s) needs saving–whatever that means.

I have never felt that it was lost.  Nor do I feel that I daily wallow in the mire of sin, although repetitive preaching insists that I do.

Give me a practical religion that teaches gentleness and tolerance, that acknowledges no barriers of color or creed, that remembers the aged and teaches children of goodness and not sin.

If in order to save my soul I must accept such a philosophy as I have recently heard preached, I prefer to remain for ever damned.  [Anonymous, cited by Leon Morris,  The Cross in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1965) p.271f.]

We doubt not that such self-righteousness was typical of the heirs of English Victorianism.  “We are so good, so worthy, so holy, that even the suggestion that we might be sinful and lost without a saviour is offensive.”  The Gospel of redemption from sin is of no relevance whatsoever to someone convinced of his own moral rectitude.  But this false religion was at that time still in its early days–it still spoke of moral values such as gentleness, but in that empty platitudinous manner.  Gentleness and tolerance meant accepting every creed.  It celebrated an intrinsic goodness of all.

What can we conclude about such a portentous, prophetic statement of faith?  Many things, but chief among them is this: it is very clear that the correspondent was a person who had been passed over by the Holy Spirit of the Living God.  Whilst professing a higher, better light they remained in a deadly darkness of soul and mind.  The Messiah of God, Jesus Christ solemnly declared that He had not come to call those who were as self-righteous like the correspondent.  He came only to those who knew themselves to be sinners, lost and without hope. (Mark 2:17)

But how does one come to a certain conviction of their own sinful depravity?  It comes from an encounter with God, the Spirit.  When He comes, said Jesus, “He will convict the world concerning sin, and righteousness and judgement.” (John 16:8)  But His coming is as the wind: “Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.  So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit. (John 3: 7,8)

The benighted letter writer, who saw himself as upright in thought, word, and deed professed that he would rather be damned than give up on the belief in his self-righteousness.  The Spirit of God had evidently passed him by and left him in his ignorance and darkness.  He had heard the Gospel, but had not heard it at all.

We suggest that the rapid and calamitous decline into the realm of animalist secularism can be explained by the sort of religion espoused by this letter writer, archetypical of a generation.  Now, in the West, a couple of generations later, we are confronted with the fruits of this arrogant, self-righteous, hard-hearted religion.  A people who profess themselves righteous, and without sin are the most dangerous of all, for whatever their hand finds to do becomes righteous in their own eyes.

They would rather be damned than contemplate the alternative possibility: that they themselves are corrupted and all they do is tainted with poison.

Now this does not mean that all it lost for God’s Kingdom in the West.  But it does mean that we must be clear whence our help must come.  We, like the exile Ezekiel, are living in a valley of dry, dead bones.  Only God can raise dead bones to be reconstituted as living beings.  When God asked Ezekiel, “Can these bones live?” Ezekiel knew the truth, and replied, “O Lord God, you know.”  (Ezekiel 37).  So, our hope and help is the Lord.  He alone can cause the Western dead, who lie as bleached bones on every hand, to live again. 

And God, let us remember, is never held back from working, either through many or through few.  As the old saint put it, one man, with God at his side, is a majority. 

Dangerous Ideas

Deathly Silence

An anonymous commentator called our attention to a piece from the Briefing at Matthias Media, commenting upon the “Festival of Dangerous Ideas” held recently at the Sydney Opera House. 

We had a talkfest here in Sydney recently called ‘The Festival of Dangerous Ideas’, at which participants could experience the frisson of discussing daring and explosive concepts with a soy latte in hand. Most of the ideas were in fact rather conventionally dangerous in a green-left sort of way, although gay activist Dan Savage received special marks for his dangerous idea that abortion should be made mandatory for 30 years to make a dent in the worldwide population problem. (The audience, having escaped the womb safely themselves, felt confident to clap.)

However, at one point in one of the debates, something remarkable happened. In a moment of real courage, Peter Hitchens (brother of Christopher) suggested that the most dangerous idea in the world was that “Jesus Christ was the son of God and rose from the dead”.¹

The audience lapsed into a deathly silence. It was as if someone had just praised Margaret Thatcher

The audience cheered, thinking that Hitchens was channelling his late brother in a religion-poisons-everything sort of way. But when asked why Jesus’ resurrection was dangerous, Hitchens said this:

Because it alters the whole of human behaviour and all our responsibilities. It turns the universe from a meaningless chaos into a designed place in which there is justice and there is hope and, therefore, we all have a duty to discover the nature of that justice and work towards that hope. It alters us all. If we reject it, it alters us all as well. It is incredibly dangerous. It’s why so many people turn against it.²

The audience lapsed into a deathly silence. It was as if someone had just praised Margaret Thatcher.

The whole incident (and festival) was sobering and encouraging at the same time. It showed very graphically just how despised and marginal the Christian gospel is, and how far gone our public intellectual conversation is from a biblical world view. But it also showed, just fleetingly, how daring and explosive the Christian gospel is; how shocking, how confronting, how dangerous.

It’s the kind of message that comes with a manifesto.

1. Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Q&A: From the Festival of Dangerous Ideas, Monday 4th November, 2013, accessed 24/12/2013, http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s3868791.htm ↩
2. Ibid. ↩

H/T: Anonymous.

Generous Condescension

Dhimmi’s At Home

Further to our piece on Boko Haram, Andrew Bolt of Australia provides another take–on a Lord Haw Haw-type figure who is one of Australia’s foremost apologists for Islamic oppression.  He is a media favourite.

His counsel on Boko Haram?  They are a splintered group, so diverse that they are impossible to identify or discuss. You know, like Al Qaeda.

WALEED Aly is the model moderate Muslim, used by the media to persuade us we have little to fear from Islam but our own bigotry. 
 
His rewards have been great. Once the spokesman for the Islamic Council of Victoria, he is now an ABC radio host, a Channel 10 co-presenter and an Age columnist.  He is even a politics lecturer at Monash University’s Global Terrorism Research Centre, despite having no doctorate and having qualified in engineering and law.  This week Aly showed the style that’s made him such a pet of the establishment Left but a worry to me.

Nigeria’s Boko Haram group last month kidnapped more than 200 schoolgirls from a boarding school and its leader announced they were “slaves” he would sell. Two are already said to be dead.  As so often when Muslim terrorists strike, Aly was brought on by Channel Ten’s The Project to explain away our fears as “an expert in terrorism”.

“So who is this group exactly?” he was asked.  Not once in his answer did “Muslim” or “Islamic” pass Aly’s lips.  “They are a really, really hard group to define because they are so splintered and so diverse,” he said.  “What we do know though is that the broader movement is a terrorist movement and they’ve been wanting to overthrow the Nigerian government and establish a government of their own.  But beyond that, this particular group, who have done this particular thing, it’s hard to identify who they are and they might just be vigilantes.”

Bolt responds in his inimitable style:

From a lecturer from a Global Terrorism Research Centre, this answer is astonishingly uninformed.  There is no mystery about who took the girls.  Boko Haram’s leader, Abubakar Shekau, has already shot a video of himself — part of which The Project showed — saying “I abducted your girls,”, a boast not doubted by the Nigerian government.

Some girls who escaped confirm the kidnappers were Boko Haram terrorists who shouted “Allahu Akhbar,’ (God is great)” as they attacked the school.  Nor is there any mystery about Boko Haram’s agenda.  Boko Haram means “Western education is sinful” — haram being the loaned Arabic word meaning sinful or forbidden by Allah. The group’s official title is Congregation of the People of Tradition for Proselytism and Jihad.

In his latest video Shekau stated his group’s agenda so clearly a true terrorism expert could not have missed it.  This was “a war against Christians”, Shekau shouted, and “real Muslims, who are following Salafism” should support him.  “Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill.”

And Boko Haram has indeed killed — thousands of civilians, mostly Christians.  No, Waleed, these are no mere “vigilantes” or revolutionaries simply wanting to “establish a government of their own”.  They are yet another variety of the Muslim extremists who have struck from Moscow to Mumbai, Bali to London, Syria to New York.

Why, then are folk like Aly so lionised by the media in Australia?  Well, it appears it all comes down to white-guilt and self-loathing coupled with a determination not to criticise Islam in any way, shape, or form.  “Islam is not the problem.  We are the problem.”  In some perverse, Freudian kind of way that attitude somehow seems to make the members of the Commentariat feel better about themselves. 

But my criticism is less of Aly himself than of those who buy and promote what he sells.  Much of the media seems far too eager to be told we have no real problem other than, as Aly wrote recently, that “plenty of white people (even ordinary reasonable ones) are good at telling coloured people what they should and shouldn’t find racist”. In other words, the real problem is the white “us”, not a “them”.

We see this self-loathing evasion too often for our safety.  Aly protects the media class from having to confront the difficult: is Islam a threat? What have we imported and what danger would we run by importing more? No wonder he’s done well.

It’s the modern Western counterpoint to Islamic authoritarianism.  Capitulation.  Islam calls it dhimmi-ism–servile submission.    

 

Letter From Australia (About a Ruinous Government)

Cleaning Up The Unlucky Country

In hindsight it will likely be told that Australia, of all the developed countries, handled the Global Financial Crisis (GFC”) the worst–and that, dear friends, from a country which went into the crisis positioned far better than most.  What caused the manufacture of such a crisis?

• A grandiose Prime Minister who cast himself in a Churchillian role
• An insecure Prime Minister who wanted to be seen as the Barack Obama of the Asia-Pacific Region
• An economically ignorant Prime Minister who thought that money could be borrowed ad infinitum.

The name of the one who is arguably Australia’s worst Prime Minister?  Kevin Rudd.

Paul Sheehan, Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, fills in the details.

Unusually, history offers a precise time and place, right down to the day, to appreciate why Australia has gone, seemingly suddenly, from a land of boom to a nation facing an austerity budget with sacrifices expected of all. The date was February 4, 2009.

On that day, for the first time in the 15 months since the Howard government had been defeated, a spontaneous upsurge of genuine unity, concern and outrage came from the opposition. It crossed all factions and cliques. It fused Liberals and Nationals.  The cause of their collective alarm was the size and scale, and haste and dubious design, of six appropriations bills that Kevin Rudd’s government was about to ram through Parliament. These bills would transform the budget.

The catalyst for this was the 2008 financial crisis that had thrown the United States and western Europe into recession and come close to fusing their banking systems. The crisis had not, however, affected Canada or most of Asia. It was countries running big government debt and deficits that were in crisis control.

At the beginning of the GFC, Australian banks were rated the best and strongest in the world; the government was running a fiscal surplus and had done for years; mining and its downstream industries were booming due to strong demand from the developing world.  But either Rudd panicked, or his vaunting ambition saw an opportunity to paint his inflated ego into history’s portrait gallery, or he was just plain economically ignorant. 

Rudd said Australia needed decisive action to avoid a recession. When the opposition caught a glimpse of what he intended it saw immediately that Rudd’s grandiosity was dangerously at work. We are now discovering in great detail, via the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Scheme, the extent of dysfunction of Rudd’s management vision.

Joe Hockey, who was about to become shadow treasurer, opened the attack on February 4. “We have not seen the six bills that are going to be introduced, debated and voted on in this place today,” he said. “These six bills will take us into $100 billion of debt.”

Malcolm Turnbull, then opposition leader, followed soon after. “In four years, net debt will be $70 billion … and the government has asked for the right, just a moment ago, to borrow up to $200 billion, or $9500 for every man, woman and child in Australia,” he said.  “The plan reeks of nothing more than panic … We do not reject the need for a stimulus at this time. Our judgment is that $42 billion is more than is appropriate right now. The government is looking increasingly like a frightened soldier who fires off all his ammunition in a panic in the first minutes of an engagement … Our judgment is that a more appropriate level of stimulus is in order, 1 to 2 per cent of GDP, or between $15 billion and $20 billion.”

All night, Coalition members, 57 in the House and Senate, rose to speak. Former treasurer Peter Costello, silent on the back bench for a year, was moved to genuine outrage.  “When you inherit an economy which has a budget in surplus and no net debt, which has unemployment at 30-year lows, where the credit rating has been restored to a AAA rating on foreign currency bonds, where you have a Future Fund of $61 billion and a Higher Education Endowment Fund, when you inherit an economy in that condition you have to find a fault somewhere,” he said. “If you cannot find a fault somewhere, what problem have you got to solve? So the Labor Party, naturally enough, looked for a problem. The trouble is, it was the wrong one.”

The problem lay with a minor matter called government debt.  Borrow in haste, repent in leisure.  It will take decades for the fiscal damage done by Rudd to be repaired–and it will inflict pain upon at least two generations of Australians.  Or, they will cave, and kick the can down the road for their grandchildren to face up to. 

When debate was finally guillotined it was 4.45am. For the opposition it was a new dawn. It did not need to wait for opinion polls or focus groups. Typical was this from former minister Bruce Billson. “The Coalition is seeking to ensure that the nation does not sleepwalk into a poorly designed, irresponsible and unsustainable package dreamt up by a panicked government,” he said. “The only certain outcome of this package is waking up to the nightmare of decades of excessive debt and deficit.”

That is exactly what happened. Rudd was worse than Whitlam. In the six years Labor was in government, the growth in Australia’s real federal expenditure was close to highest in the Organisation of Economic Co-Operation and Development – even though Australia was a resource economy with a sturdy banking sector and no housing bubble, and thus not susceptible to the financial shock in the US and much of Europe.

It is difficult to move the macro-economic needle quickly in a $1.5 trillion economy that is the 12th largest in the world (larger than Spain, which has 47 million people). In 2009, Rudd managed to jolt the needle, ramping up federal spending as a percentage of GDP.

He was also more profligate than Julia Gillard and she was no prize, loading future budgets with the Gonski education program, the national disability insurance scheme and the multibillion asylum seeker debacle without seeming to have a Gonski about how it would all be paid for.

Now that the bills are coming due, neither Rudd nor Gillard are around. It is the morning after. The clean-up. The payment due date. And the demographic challenge has loomed into focus. So let’s not confuse who did the spending and who is having to pay. . . .

A clean-up is not a crisis. We’ve already had a false crisis and are about to pay for it.

Antidotes to Bigotry and Hate Speech

More Free Speaking, Please

There is a controversy broiling in Australia over free speech.  That country has moved radically away from free speech rights in recent years.  The present government, under Tony Abbott is seeking to redress the balance.

The issues are now familiar to us all.  Advocates of spurious human rights have promulgated the radical curtailing of free speech by proscribing “hate speech”, otherwise known as bigoted speech, offensive speech, racist speech, anti-Islamic speech, and so forth.  In reality all these proscriptions seek (and achieve) curtailing certain kinds of speech.  The Commentariat is agog and aghast in Oz over the government’s intentions to reform the current anti-free speech regime in Australia.  Consider the umbrage taken by a Sydney scribe, printed in the NZ Herald:

It’s all part of Tony Abbott’s vision of a new Liberal dawn. The Australian Prime Minister’s conservative Government intends to dilute racial vilification laws to enshrine the right of Australians to be bigots.  Amid fury and concern even within his own party, Abbott has invoked the greater goal of free speech to amend the Racial Discrimination Act to allow offensive, insulting and humiliating abuse so long as it does not incite hatred or violence.

Do people have a (freedom) right to be bigots?  Of course.  To be ignorant?  Of course.  To be a venter of spleen?  Of course.  Everyone has a right to go down to the pit in their own way.  It’s called freedom.
  But, says the caviller, there are always limits upon freedom.  Too right–for the purpose of protecting the freedom rights of others.  Curtailing so-called “hate speech”  does not fit into that category.

The fundamental flaw in anti-free speech laws springing up like mushrooms all over the place is that free speech is deemed (or imagined) to be in the ear of the hearer.  Hate-speech, bigoted speech, offensive speech is “proven” to be such if the hearer finds it to be hateful, bigoted, or offensive.  If the hearer takes offence, the speaker is thereby proved guilty. 

Imagine a parallel.  It is a crime to act with murderous intent.  A thug loses it, and hits his wife.  The state prosecutes and the courts convict with the crime of acting with murderous intent.  What was the evidence and proof of the intent to murder?  The wife believed it to be the case.  Or worse, the court rules it was likely the wife believed it to be so.  Therefore, the thug is guilty beyond doubt. 

The situation in which Australians now find themselves with respect to speech, (as do citizens in the UK, and much of Europe, and Canada), as bad as  the parallel cited above.  Andrew Bolt, a columnist in Australia, was found guilty in 2011 of “race hate speech” because of

his ”offensive” 2009 article accused ”fair-skinned” Aborigines of choosing their racial identity to get certain benefits. [Sydney Morning Herald]

A judge decided that some folk would likely take offence, and hey presto, Bolt was convicted of hate speech.  

The right to freedom of speech took something of a battering today after Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was found guilty of breaching the racial discrimination act.  Bolt’s crime was to suggest that some people of mixed racial heritage, whom he described as ‘fair skinned aborigines’, only declared themselves as such in order to claim govt benefits.

Justice Mordecai Bromberg, who presided over the case, found that such a statement was likely to cause offence to those at whom it was aimed, and were not made in ‘good faith’.  This judgement was probably inevitable because of the manner in which Victoria’s Racial Vilification Laws were drafted. Because they proscribe statements that might cause offence, it’s now very difficult for anyone to debate the issue of race without getting themselves into trouble. [Tom Elliott, 3A Radio commentary.  Emphasis, ours.]

One struggles to imagine how folk can endorse and champion free speech rights, on the one hand, and yet applaud such censorious law and decisions, on the other.  Free speech rights in the West have rapidly devolved into free speech for moi, and curtailment of everyone else who offends moi.  It is this travesty which the Abbott government is seeking to redress and reform.

A victim of this infamous curtailment of free speech, Andrew Bolt has written the last word on the matter:

But is a law against free speech really our only and safest recourse [against racial hate speech]? Six years ago The Sydney Morning Herald allowed Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, then Mufti of Australia, to peddle a bit of denialism himself: “I, like many researchers in the world, shy off the number of innocent victims that had been estimated at six million.”

Hilali already had a disgraceful record of hate speech. He’d called women who wore no hijab “uncovered meat’’ for rapists.  He’d accused Jews of using “sex and abominable acts of buggery, espionage, treason and economic hoarding to control the world’’. He’d praised suicide bombers as “heroes’’ and the September 11 terror attacks as “God’s work against oppressors”.

How did Hilali get away with that when we’ve had the RDA for two decades? Answer: because we had failed to use our free speech.  SBS journalists actually filmed Hilali praising the September 11 terrorism but destroyed their tape to avoid giving the “wrong idea”. Other journalists, likewise cowed by social and threatened legal sanctions against criticising Muslims, looked the other way until the radical threat became too obvious. Even today, news reports often delete ethnic descriptors such as “Middle Eastern appearance” from police appeals to help identify wanted men.

Even so, what muzzled Hilali since has been not the law but public opinion.  Media and talkback criticism finally became so much that the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils dropped him as Mufti.  Yet again, the best antidote to bad speech was free speech and the worst has been the law.

The proof is in. Australians can be trusted to maintain the moral code. Say no to racism, yes to free speech.

The best antidote to bigotry and hate speech is more free speaking.  The alternative is too ruinous to contemplate.

Telling Signs

Unbelief Bearing Consistent Fruit

We are told that “by their fruits you shall know them”.  In similar vein, we are told that “wisdom is vindicated by her children”.  The implication of the latter is that folly and Unbelief is exposed and condemned by its children.

The modern husting-hugger seems to believe that public anger conveys genuineness.  It apparently magnifies the horror and evil of whatever they happen to be protesting and shouting.  Outrage substitutes for argument, but somehow that is a good thing, because passion, even inchoate passion, sprinkles an aura of authenticity to a cause when rational argument fails.  Passion therefore cloaks itself as truth.

Of course there is nothing wrong with passion, provided it is grounded in truth and righteousness.  But what our modern protesting shock-troops fail to grasp is that the tenuousness of the cause is being exposed by the antics.  The children are shaming the parents.  The actions illustrate the evil of the underlying beliefs. 

When the “Occupy” movement had its half-life of public attention the media was captivated by the prospect of a genuine, grass-roots, little-person rebellion.  A few more headlines and sales dollars for the media beckoned.  But before you could say, “Down with the capitalists”  stories began to filter out of the “spontaneous” protest camps about rape, dirt, filth, drugs, public defecation, and general lawlessness.  Ah, said the fellow-travellers–that shows its a genuine protest movement concerned about real evils.

What the Occupy “movement” actually showed is the highest, most committed flowers of Unbelief.  The children were shaming the parent–which in this case was the doctrine that God is dead.  The protesting children began publicly to live as if God really were dead.  Since they did not fear God, they did not fear man.  They were free to abuse, shout, spit, rape and steal.

There was recently another manifestation of the fruits of Unbelief–this time in Australia.
  Miranda Devine describes the inchoate, senseless, unreasoned passion of the zealots of Unbelief as they went on public display recently.

It  makes sense that those who have made a career out of refugee activism, like barrister Julian Burnside, would applaud the March in March protest over the weekend. All over Australia, from Perth to Belmore Park, the grab-bag of placards waved by protesters ranged from silly to sinister, but they were a tremendous showcase for the incoherent, impotent muddle the Left finds itself in now that conservatives are ascendant. . . .


But there were two unifying themes. One was refugee activism — more of that later.

The other was a visceral hatred of [Australian Prime Minister] Tony Abbott, with scrawny young men wearing black “F… Tony Abbott” T-shirts walking alongside children dragged along to learn how to hate.

“F… Tony Abbott F… democracy” read one banner.  The Abbott-hating ranged from “Our country has been hijacked by terrorists!” and “Abbott is a weapon of mass destruction,” to “Resign dickhead” and “I vote for retroactive abortion on Tony”.

There were echoes of Scott Ludlam in “We want our country back.”, “I want a government I can be proud of” and “Tony stop embarrassing Australia” banners. Abbott is a “racist sexist elitist homophobic fascist” read another placard.  Melbourne feminists even knitted a banner saying “Misogynist KnitWit: Not PM Material”.  Insults ranged from “Tony is Abutt” to a sign featuring Abbott’s face with a close up photo of a penis tip affixed to his head.  There was a placard showing Abbott’s face with a pig’s nose and the word “OINK”.  “It’s our planet Tony you ignorant pig” read another.  In Canberra a woman wearing an “Ask me about your rights at work” union T shirt carried a placard of Abbott’s face with the words “Ditch the Drongo”. . . .

And in Sydney a young tattooed woman wearing what looked like a blonde wig carried a sign saying “#KillABBOTT” and the words “Campaign?” and “Pozible”, which is a fundraising website for random causes. Presumably she was drumming up support for a crowd-sourced assassination of the Prime Minister, an incitement to violence worth police investigation.  In Newcastle, union leader Gary Kennedy took to the stage with a Scottish accent to tell protesters Gina Rinehart was a “filthy animal” and “”despicable human being”.

Then the Newcastle Trades Hall secretary went well beyond the realms of acceptable protest. Qantas boss Alan Joyce, he said, “should be shot somewhere in the back of the head.” He apologised yesterday, but it’s too late. An already discredited union movement has flicked the switch to “crazy”.

This is the sort of scene that Greens MP Adam Bandt, who met protesters outside Parliament House, described as “the compassionate, humane and generous heart of this country”.

On social media, barrister Burnside also looked on approvingly as the Marchmarchers brandished “Free the Refugee” posters. He re-tweeted another tweeter’s glowing endorsement of this placard: “If Tony Abbott and (Environment Minister) Greg Hunt were drowning any you could only save one of them what pub would you go to?”  Ha ha. . . .

But they seem angrier than ever.

It makes sense only when you look at some of the people who are being foiled by the Abbott government’s border protection policies.  Take Iranian Arash Sedigh, who was the star of the ABC’s 730 program on Monday night, appearing in footage taken by asylum seekers who were being towed back to Java in what they angrily called a “f…ing orange boat”.

Sedigh admitted he had been refused entry to Australia through the skilled migration program and so: “We decided to go there in illegal way, to make them accept us.”  But when the people smuggler’s boat he was on was intercepted by the Royal Australian Navy he was outraged. “I couldn’t tolerate. I told them, ‘I will kill you if you don’t take us to that ship. I have nothing to lose. I will kill you’.”  Finally we see this charmer atop the orange lifeboat which is chugging back to Java after being cut loose by the Australians.

“They put us in this f…ing orange boat and sent us back to Indonesia. F… Australia. If later on you said, ‘Why they do that to America on September 11?’ you should know the cause of it is your very deeds. Remember 9-11 for United States.  All the world should know why. Australian government, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Immigration — all of them are the smugglers.”

Then the footage shows two of his compatriots giving the finger to the camera: “F… Australia!” So there you have it: “F… Australia”. “F… democracy” “Kill Abbott”.

It’s the exact same attitude of angry unjustified entitlement, which the Marchmarchers exhibited all weekend.

So, let’s recap.  What is being vindicated by these children of Unbelief? Murder, rapine, rage, profanity, and a being besotted with depraved sexuality.  It is a living portent of Hell.  By their fruits you shall know them. 

End of an Age of Entitlement in Australia

Personal Responsibility Beckoning

We posted recently about wholesome progress being made in Australia under the Abbott government to end corporate welfare.  The collusion of between business and government is never pretty and always represents a corrupt rort whereby the owners of favoured businesses get to be enriched at the expense of the taxpayer.  (The same may be said of the collusion between unions and governments, but that’s a matter for another day.)

Treasurer Joe Hockey is proving to be up to the challenge, according to a piece in the Sydney Morning Herald by Mark Kenny, entitled “Hockey Calls an End to ‘Age of Entitlement'”. 

Treasurer Joe Hockey has bluntly warned Australians that the days of governments saving businesses and jobs had passed, telling them, ”the age of entitlement is over, and the age of personal responsibility has begun”.  The tough comments come as the government braces for further requests for public funds from big employers such as Toyota, and as some within the federal cabinet seek more help for farmers.

With a vicious drought gripping Queensland and NSW, Mr Hockey defended existing ”exceptional circumstances” assistance and called for a proper debate about ”sustainable farming” including an honest look at the realities of water usage.  In a pointed message to the Coalition’s junior partner, the Nationals, who have started agitating for increased drought assistance for beleaguered farmers, a determined Mr Hockey reaffirmed the government’s new determination to resist the usual pressures for governments to rescue unviable businesses.

Hockey went on to tear down the false case that had been put up to justify the government squandering millions of tax payers’ money on cannery SPC-Ardmona, owned by corporate giant, Coca-Cola Amatil.

Just days after the cabinet shocked workers at the Shepparton based SPC-Ardmona cannery by refusing a request for $25 million to stay afloat, Mr Hockey also fired a warning shot across the bows of any companies thinking of putting their hands out.  Describing the SPC decision as a signal to the rest of the country that past practice no longer applied, he said it was up to businesses to take all necessary steps to get their own houses in order before the last resort of seeking a government bail-out.

He said SPC Ardmona was part of a very profitable larger company, Coca-Cola Amatil, so it was not appropriate for taxpayers to subsidise bad decisions.  ”Even by their own admission, they haven’t run it properly. So they came to us, in fact they came to the previous government and asked for help … so taxpayers’ money would be buying new plant and equipment in the SPC Ardmona factory so that Coca-Cola Amatil could make a larger profit,” he said, campaigning in Brisbane for Saturday’s Griffith byelection.

Continuing the government’s criticism of SPC’s generous industrial agreements, he said companies needed to negotiate agreements with their employees that were sustainable for that business.  ”Ultimately it comes down to the partnership between employers and employees, and if that is what they negotiate, then please do not come to the government asking for other taxpayers’ money when those agreements fail,” Mr Hockey said. ”I say to you, emphatically, everyone in Australia must do the heavy lifting now.  ”The age of entitlement is over. The age of personal responsibility has begun.”

The author of the piece, Mark Kenny claims that the SPC-Ardmona decision shocked workers.  May we suggest it would have been far more of a shock to the board of SPC-Ardmona and the senior management team and board of Coca-Cola Amatil who had long been slurping at the government trough.  The idea that the taxpayer was no longer going to be on tap to bail out reckless corporates so that their shareholders could continue to have gilt-lined pockets must be deeply disturbing.  

In the medium term, however, it will all be to the good for Australian businesses, which will be forced to face up to the free market of more open competition.  That will force them to become corporately more lean, mean, and mobile–and, consequently more competitive–to the ultimate good of their customers and clients.

Long may it continue.  We acknowledge that both Labour and the Liberal/National Coalition have been guilty of supporting measures of government corporate welfare over many years.  Both are guilty of helping create the “age of entitlement” that has pervaded Australian business for so long.  It’s too early to tell whether Hockey and Abbott will carry the day and effect a sea-change in Australian business ethics and political integrity.  But we admire the attempt and the beginnings. 

In conclusion, we reiterate why we Christians ought to strongly oppose corporate welfare.  It is intrinsically corrupt, and the longer it continues, the more perverse and corrupting it becomes.  The politicians and government become involved to curry votes (otherwise known as bribery) and secure corporate donations from businesses; corporates exploit tax payers to line their own pockets and subsidise their lazy, inefficient business operations;  and the ordinary bloke suffers at both ends, having his taxes misspent to make the privileged few more wealthy, whilst being forced to pay higher prices for products and services produced by inefficient businesses, which are being subsidised by his taxes. 

Higher taxes and higher prices so that a corrupt plutocracy can be kept swaddled in cotton-wool.  Oh, what a lovely world the age of entitlement has produced. Let’s hope the age of personal responsibility will succeed in its coming and long may it last.

Corporate Welfare No Longer

No Taxpayers’ Oil for Squeaky Wheels

There are few things more risible and contemptible than corporate welfare.  The idea of the government using taxpayers to subsidise businesses is obnoxious on a number of counts, not the least of which is that the many are made to pay in order to make a few anointed ones wealthy. The bottom line always is that if a business cannot compete and win market favour by virtue of the quality and price of its goods and services, it deserves to go out of business.  It is far better that it does.  Subsidised businesses are always relatively inefficient businesses.  To the extent they are subsidised, consumer/taxpayers are being overcharged in one form or another. 

We in New Zealand are very familiar with corporate welfare.  Older citizens here grew up with the nostrum that farmers were the backbone of the New Zealand economy.  The taxpayer, we were told, had to help the farmer make a dollar (or pound, as it was in those days) otherwise all of us would be sold into penury.  Before long taxpayers worked out that even if it were true that farmers were the backbone of the NZ economy, it was also true that taxpayers were the flesh and sinew of the farmer and that the whole sham was a massive, national Ponzi scheme.
  We only got paid out if more and more taxpayers’ money was extracted from them, put in at the top of the funnel, to ensure that a bit trickled back out the spout at the bottom.  Meanwhile, the farmer was guaranteed a cosseted and protected and (relatively) wealthy lifestyle. 

Eventually it was all stripped away under the historic reforms conducted by Messrs Douglas and Prebble.  Now, after a difficult period of adjustment,  farmers are more prosperous than ever, and their industry is sustainable because it is efficient, out-competing even those farming industries overseas which remain cosseted and protected by taxpayers’ funds (as in the United States, for example).

Australia has never rejected corporate welfare as a modus operandi.  It has remained far too wedded to queering the pitch and underarm bowling as national treasures.  It is thus extremely gratifying to see the current Prime Minister, Tony Abbott turning his back on some of the more egregious forms of corporate welfare.  The latest case is denying millions to taxpayers’ funds to Coca-Cola Amatil (“CCA”) which, for reasons that escape all but the morally obtuse, believes that it is entitled to government support of its wholly owned subsidiary, SPC Ardmona.  What’s a mere $25million dollars amongst friends, after all?

Prime Minister Tony Abbott hardened his stance on government assistance to business, rejecting SPC Ardmona’s request for a $25 million co-investment in the fruit processor and calling on the company to renegotiate conditions in its ”extraordinary” enterprise agreement with workers.

It seems that SPC Ardmona is uncompetitive and the reasons lie in its far too expensive workforce.  For years it has gone alone to get along with militant unions, paying up in response to union stand over tactics.   Now it wants the Australian government to sanction this corporate folly and cowardice by making the Australian taxpayer subsidise it.  The Prime Minister has replied to the request with a firm negative.  First there was Ford, then there was Holden (General Motors) and now APC Ardmona (Coca-Cola Amatil).  Great to see.

Below is a brief corporate history of SPC Ardmona.

In 2005, Coca-Cola Amatil bought APC Ardmona.  It would have gone over it with a fine tooth comb before purchase.  Labour contracts would been carefully scrutinised. They would have known all about the potential risks and downside.  Meanwhile, Coca-Cola Amitil enjoys a $A9 billion stock market capitalisation. $25m is chump change.  Its CEO, Terry Davis makes an argument for the government’s contribution, saying that CCA would invest more.  On that basis, every Aussie corporate could set up its annual investment budget and trot off to Canberra asking for the government to contribute one third of the budget, because the respective companies are all going to invest more than the requested government contribution.  That’s what you call a solid business case–at least in CCA land.  As they say in Darwin, “Puhleeeeze, mate”

Corporate welfare always smacks of self-serving corruption.  And so Prime Minister Abbott pushed right back:

Mr Abbott said Coca-Cola Amatil had posted a half-year profit of $216 million to June 2013, and had signalled its willingness to invest $161 million in its manufacturing operations, and there was ”no way” the government wanted to see workers take a pay cut.  ”It is very important that they complete the renegotiation they have embarked upon. It is very important they complete the negotiation of the enterprise bargaining agreement … there are wet allowances, there are loadings, there are extensive provisions to cash out sick leave, there are extremely generous redundancy provisions,” he said.

”The decision that came from the cabinet today sets an important marker. This is a government that will make sure that the restructure that some Australian businesses need … is led by business.”  He said Coca-Cola Amatil ”truly has the resources to ensure that SPC Ardmona is in a strong position to restructure”, challenging company chairman David Gonski to not let SPC workers down.

Corporate welfare–flaky, self-serving, and deceptive. 

Send Us the Judge

Keep Packer, Send us the Judge

Kerre McIvor

NZ Herald 

[Kerre McIvor had an excellent piece in the Herald On Sunday over the weekend on privilege, crime, and punishment. Ed.]

 

Some people were shocked and surprised by the sentence meted out to former Kiwi league international Russell Packer in a Sydney court this week.  If you don’t follow league, you may not know Packer’s name, but if I remind you of the infamous incident of a league player standing on a field, peeing copiously into his shorts, all of which was caught on camera, that may jog your memory.

Packer was in court after pleading guilty to assaulting Enoka Time outside a Sydney bar last November. Packer had been ejected from the bar and bashed Time in a drunken rage, before stamping on his face, leaving him with facial fractures.  It was a vicious, nasty assault, and the judge sentenced Packer accordingly. He described the attack as cowardly and deplorable and said he was sick and tired of alcohol-fuelled violence in the community.

He gave Packer the maximum he could under Aussie law – two years – and denied him bail while his lawyers scrambled to mount an appeal.

The people stunned by the sentence are divided into two camps.
Team Packer was gobsmacked. After all, this is no common thug we’re talking about. This is a league player, mate. A representative sportsman. Sure, give him a fine. Maybe a little bit of community service working with kiddies. If absolutely necessary, some counselling for his alcohol abuse and his anger, but come on. Jail? That’s for ordinary people.

Team Packer was so confident Russ would walk from court they hadn’t even brought a change of clothes, just on the off-chance he might be sent down. His dad, Russell senior, said he was devastated and saw his son as the victim.

In the past few months, Sydney has seen several people seriously injured by being king hit – punched without warning or reason – and commentators have deplored the drunken violence.  So in Team Packer’s alternate reality, Russ has been made an example of when, in his dad’s view, people go around doing much worse things and get a slap on the hand.  I don’t know that there’s much worse in an assault than stamping on a man’s head when he’s down, but Packer senior and I will just have to agree to disagree on that one.

So, shock and horror from the Packer camp. On the other side, many New Zealanders were surprised that a judge existed with the cojones to do the right thing.  So often in New Zealand, we’ve seen high-profile people walk away from serious charges simply because … well, because they’re high profile, I suppose. And here’s this Aussie judge throwing the book at an NRL player who’s really nothing more than a common thug.

Given the lame sentences handed out over the years by his Kiwi counterparts to defendants with similar high profiles within sport, no wonder so many New Zealanders were surprised that Packer was being sent directly to jail, without passing Go.

Bugger deporting Packer if and when he serves his time. Let’s see if the Aussies will keep him. We’ll swap Packer for the judge.