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Tag Archives: Andrew Bolt

Bigotry, mockery and humiliation

After telling us in the Senate that people have a right to be bigots, in a press conference today Senator Brandis said we must also defend their right to mock and humiliate others as this leads to a robust democracy. To defend this outrageous statement he referred to three examples.

First was the “infamous example of the Bolt case” where Andrew Bolt was found to have contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act when he published a series of articles suggesting that it was fashionable for “fair-skinned people” of diverse ancestry to choose Aboriginal racial identity for the purposes of political and career clout, implying certain individuals had been given their positions purely because of a distant ancestor rather than earning them on merit.

The applicants sought an apology, legal costs, and a gag on republishing the articles and blogs. They did not seek damages. In other words, had Bolt apologised and agreed not to republish before the matter went to court, there would have been no court case and no cost.

Senator Brandis says it is up to the victim to stand up for themselves. These people tried that – Bolt refused to say sorry and continued publishing related material. He has a large audience in both the print and television media. How were these nine people supposed to “stand up for themselves” without legal recourse?

The next example was even more bizarre. Senator Brandis said it was ok to mock and humiliate because they do it every day in Parliament. People’s feeling may be hurt but hey, shit happens. (The last sentence is me paraphrasing – the one before it sadly isn’t.)

I found this astonishing. He suggests that humiliating people is a crucial part of the robust debate necessary for a strong democracy. What a load of bullshit. That shows how low our Parliament has sunk. We naively think we are electing them to govern – to make decisions based on expert advice for the greater good. They think they are there to win the insult game.

The third example was the media. Brandis said to the assembled journalists “You mock we politicians every day and so you should”. Personally I would prefer if they reported accurately on what you are doing and provided informed comparative analysis.

These examples from Senator Brandis, that government and media like to mock and humiliate people, are why over 100,000 people marched in March. We want better. In fact we demand better.

Every year, people, many of them children, commit suicide because of mockery and humiliation. It is not ok to deliberately try to embarrass people. The damage done can be long term if not irreparable. While considering how you can protect Andrew Bolt from ever having to say sorry, consider this:

  • One student in every four in Australian schools is affected by bullying, says recent research commissioned by the Federal Government.
  • An estimated 200 million children and youth around the world are being bullied by their peers, according to the 2007 Kandersteg Declaration Against Bullying in Children and Youth.
  • Kids who are bullied are three times more likely to show depressive symptoms, says the Centre for Adolescent Health.
  • Children who were bullied were up to nine times more likely to have suicidal thoughts, say some studies.
  • Girls who were victims of bullying in their early primary school years were more likely to remain victims as they got older, according to British research.
  • Children who were frequently bullied by their peers were more likely to develop psychotic symptoms in their early adolescence, says more UK research.
  • Girls were much more likely than boys to be victims of both cyber and traditional bullying, says a recent Murdoch Children’s Research Institute study.
  • Children as young as three can become victims of bullying, says Canadian research.
  • Young people who bully have a one in four chance of having a criminal record by the age of 30.
  • Bullying is the fourth most common reason young people seek help from children’s help services.

Senator Brandis, you have said that victims should stand up for themselves and the community should accept the responsibility for raising standards. That is what we are doing. We find the direction your government is taking offensive. The community requires you to do better. The many signs at the march in March gave you an indication of what we find offensive and the list is growing every day.

But today’s lesson, Mr Brandis, is that we do NOT want a country where our children think it is “necessary” to mock, humiliate, and embarrass people. We do NOT want our children to be bigots. We do NOT want our government and media to set this example. It’s unacceptable. Lift your game!

 

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Freedom to speak badly: one rule for protestors, another for Andrew Bolt?

Peter van Onselen devotes almost an entire page in the Australian this morning (paywalled. sorry) to complaining about the “unedifying” display of bad manners by some protestors who took part in the March in March rallies, comparing them with the infamously abusive banners held aloft by the three hundred or so activists who took part Alan Jones’s 2011 Convoy of no Confidence against Julia Gillard and her Labor government.

I would appreciate someone drawing up a comparison of the two situations, given my impression that the number of participants in the Jones rally carrying offensive placards constituted a far greater percentage of the whole than those in the March in March rallies.

As van Onselen concedes, in the Jones protest virulent expressions of rage and hatred were legitimised by the presence of leading politicians photographed under the placards. No such validation took place of the relatively few offensive banners on display during March in March.

“Calling a conservative a fascist and portraying his image to replicate Hitler is deliberately designed to undermine their ideological positioning in the same way that calling a woman a ‘bitch’ or ‘witch’ carries clear sexist intent,” van Onselen states, in his comparison of the two situations.

I would not so readily presume an equivalence between sexist intent, and the desire to critique, albeit with a degree of hyperbole, an ideology. Sexism attacks the woman for nothing other than being a woman. Describing Abbott as “fascist” in no way attacks his gender, and is merely commentary on the manner in which he is perceived to enact his conservatism.

Placards claiming that the Abbott government is “illegitimate” are not abusive, offensive or threatening, rather they are simply wrong, and likely being employed as payback for the years of the LNP opposition equally inaccurately describing the Gillard government as “illegitimate.” What is apparent is that there are hot heads and wrong heads on both the conservative and Labor side of politics. This should not come as a surprise to anyone.

Along with Tim Wilson, Human Rights Commissioner for Freedom, (I’m sorry, I don’t know what that title means) van Onselen is disturbed not at the exercise of freedom of speech demonstrated by both rallies, but at the ill-mannered, impolite, potentially violent and “irresponsible” speech used by a small number of participants in their signage. A similar rabid element is guilty of foully derailing many otherwise useful Twitter discussions, claims van Onselen, quite rightly in some instances, though there are sensitive souls renowned for “rage quitting” Twitter when they confuse disagreement with abuse.

Van Onselen and Wilson’s desire to see public speech free from offensive, insulting and at times threatening expression is shared by many people, but quite how to achieve that remains a mystery. Bad speech must be countered by good speech, Wilson has asserted, however, taking the case of Andrew Bolt as an example, it’s difficult to see how someone with a large public platform such as Bolt, or fellow shock jocks Alan Jones, or Ray Hadley can be challenged by the people they offend and insult, who rarely have an equivalent public platform from which to counter their attacker’s bad speech with good. It is for this reason we have legislation intended to protect people from racial vilification, for example, the very legislation Mr Wilson is now intent on seeing repealed, as he believes it interferes with the absolute freedom of speech he appears to favour.

I can see Wilson’s point, however, as long as there are more powerful enunciators of bad speech with large platforms than there are good, perhaps we need other precautionary measures.

I couldn’t help but wonder, as I read the article, what van Onselen and Wilson would make of public demonstrations in other countries, Mexico perhaps, where I witnessed protests in which politicians were represented by enormous papier-mache figures with grossly exaggerated sexual organs, accompanied by banners that claimed they f*cked both dogs and their mothers and ate children. Nobody saw any cause for offence. Compared to such robust expression, the complaints seem rather prim.

Amusingly, van Onselen concludes his article with the reminder that “Protest is as an important part of democracy as are institutions designed to uphold democracy, but only when practised within the spirit of Australia’s well established political structure.” I am completely unable to see how any of the offensive signage fails to fit in with that spirit. Australian politics have, for the last few years and most certainly during Gillard’s entire term of office, been such that one would think twice before taking school children to witness Question Time, and I really don’t know who van Onselen thinks he is kidding.

The ongoing discourse about how we should conduct our discourse is unlikely to change anything. Van Onselen’s piece appears to make the claim that those who offend middle-class sensitivities undermine the more moderate message and concerns of mainstream protestors, and destroy their credibility. This may well be the case, but only because people such as van Onselen make it so, opportunistically denigrating the whole on the basis of the actions of a very few.

It is not possible to eradicate voices some consider undesirable from public expression. Otherwise we would not have to put up with the Bolts. A sign held aloft at a demonstration cannot do one tiny fraction of the harm done by Bolt, Jones and the like. If we are to conduct serious conversations about how public discourse influences attitudes and behaviours, surely we must start by interrogating the enunciations of those with the furthest reach.

This article was originally published on No Place For Sheep.

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Springtime for Abbott and Processing!

A term that originated on Usenet, Godwin’s Law states that as an online argument grows longer and more heated, it becomes increasingly likely that somebody will bring up Adolf Hitler or the Nazis. When such an event occurs, the person guilty of invoking Godwin’s Law has effectively forfieted (sic) the argument.”

Urban Dictionary.

A few days ago, I rather facetiously suggested that journalists could be rounded up as “illegal immigrants” and sent to Manus Island or Nauru if they asked too many difficult questions. Someone suggested that I should remember Godwin’s Law, and that I shouldn’t be comparing Abbott and the current front bench to Nazis, because once someone started evoking the Nazis, then one has lost the argument. (Actually, Godwin’s concept was that comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis frequently trivialised what they had done when compared to what was under discussion. For example, whether you believe speed cameras are revenue raisers or a safety measure, you can hardly compare their use to the Gestapo.)

Even though I wasn’t actually comparing Abbott and the Keystone Cabinet to the Third Reich, the comment did get me thinking. Yes, it’s true that people draw parallels with Nazi Germany far too frequently and that we certainly enjoy much greater freedom in Australia. Although the VLAD laws and certainly anti-terrorism laws lack the safeguards that would prevent me using them – should I become Prime Minister or Premier – to lock up Andrew Bolt and Tony Abbott. And anyone who objected to me locking them up.

However, I find the idea that we have nothing to worry about because the Nazis ended by exterminating several million people rather naive. We should always remember that the Final Solution was the Final Solution. It wasn’t where they started. And, while I believe that we won’t end up with death camps where we exterminate large numbers of people, I think that it’s wise to step back and look at what one is arguing.

One of my enduring memories was a man being interviewed on the radio at the time that Howard announced the restrictions on gun ownership after the Port Arthur Massacre. This person had been objecting to the proposals as a knee-jerk reaction and assuring the listeners that gun-owners were a responsible law-abiding group and that there was no reason to impose greater control on these people. Criminals and law-breakers would still obtain their guns illegally, so why punish these fine citizens who could be trusted. (So far, so good!) But then the interviewer mentioned that John Howard was going to tour country areas to explain his government’s position. At this point, the “responsible” gun-owner suggested that Howard shouldn’t come to his area because there was a lot of anger and there was no guarantee he’d be safe!! Mm, so can be trusted to only use guns appropriately, except when someone has made them very, very angry . . .

And recently, we’ve had a lot of similar stuff about the military. On one hand, we accept that they’re human beings who may occasionally stray. Stories of bullying, rituals, bastardisation, and sexual misconduct have all appeared in the media in recent years, yet when some people who are “attempting to break Australian law” accuse them of misconduct, we’re told that they’re just claims and if somebody makes a claim, there’s no need to investigate it unless we have evidence. Normally claims are investigated in order to discover if there is any evidence, but this seems to have been changed to a system where the proof needs to established before anyone looks into it – this principle should make police work a lot simpler. “Unless you bring us some forensic evidence that your house WAS broken into, we’re not going to open a file on your so-called burglary.”

Now I’m not making a judgement on the guilt or innocence in the burning hand claims. I’m merely trying to ascertain how one can dismiss an accusation so quickly. But the Liberals have been good at that. As Alex Downer argued when the AWB scandal was uncovered, he’d heard the rumours about bribes and corruption, but when he asked the AWB if they were true, the AWB said that they weren’t involved in bribes and corruption, so what more can you do.

And now we have the Liberals demanding Senator Conroy be sacked for suggesting that Angus Campbell was involved in a political cover-up. For those of you who don’t remember exactly what Conroy said.

Senator Conroy – It is a movie, and we’re living it, Colonel Jessup. I mean seriously, you can’t tell us the truth, you can’t tell the Australian public the truth because you might upset an international neighbour. That’s called a political cover-up,”

General Campbell – Senator, I feel I’ve explained the basis of my decisions

Senator Conroy – That’s a political cover-up. You’re engaged in a political cover up.

Now, apparently General Campbell was “extremely offended” by the comments. And Michaela Cash stormed out. For those of you don’t know or who’ve forgotten Senator Cash click here.

And someone commented the other day that Conroy shouldn’t go into any bars where ADF personnel are drinking. I don’t see why not. Then, for some reason, I remembered the interview with the responsible gun-owner.

Yes, we’ve entered a world where ADF personnel can’t be questioned or criticised, where we’re meant to adopt an Anzac Day/Remembrance Day attitude to the defence force all year round. We should just remember their sacrifices, be grateful and remember that they’re the ones in the front line in this war to protect our “sovereign borders”! This is not the time to show disrespect to our servicemen (and women).

So, to sum it all up.

  • We can’t compare anyone to the Nazis until they’ve killed six million, and that the argument that it was their ability to offer people up as scapegoats and to place the military above criticism that enabled them to do that isn’t something worth considering.
  • Defence personnel never do anything wrong and it would be dangerous to suggest to any of them that they do.
  • People have a right to free speech and people don’t have the right not to be offended, but only when we’re taking about racism or sexism. Journalists, for example, should be allowed to publish incorrect information without giving people the right of reply. However, when an elected Senator suggest that a general who refuses to give answers to a Senate committee is involved in a political cover-up, the general has a right to be offended and the Senator should be punished in some way.
  • Tempting though it is, if elected to be supreme leader of Australia, I should repeal the laws that enable me to lock up Bolt, Abbott and company without trial rather than use them, because if I go down that path, I can hardly be surprised if others do even worse, when they gain power. Safeguards are needed for the powerless; the powerful find ways of persecuting their enemies anyway.

FYI – Mike Godwin, of Godwin’s Law, has apparently tweeted that comparing Australia’s asylum seeker policy to the Nazis is not a trivialising comparison at all. I have not verified this so I’m only reporting rumour. If I’m not careful and continue to do such things, I’ll be a Canberra based political journalist working for a mainstream newspaper.

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Tracking Abbott’s Wrecking Ball and Broken Promises

Image by theaimn.com

Image by theaimn.com

Sally McManus is the Secretary of the Australian Services Union in NSW and the ACT.

She has been a campaigner and an organiser for more than 20 years and spends a lot of time doing and talking about organising and campaigning. Her blog is a comprehensive list of policy and other decisions taken by the Abbott Government. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the entire list (although I have no reason to doubt it) but I recommend it to those with an interest in how Tony Abbott intends changing Australia.

This is the list thus far and it is updated regularly:

86. Privatises the 104 year old Australian Valuation Office costing nearly 200 jobs – 24 January 2014
85. Seeks to wind back the World Heritage listing of Tasmania’s forests – 23 January 2014
84. Withdraws funding for an early intervention program to help vulnerable young people – 22 January 2014
83. Defunds all international environmental programs, the International Labour Organisation and cuts funding to a range of international aid programs run by NGOs such as Save the Children, Oxfam, CARE Australia and Caritas – 18 January 2014
82. Violates Indonesia’s territorial sovereignty while turning back asylum seeker boats – 17 January 2014
81. Scraps weekly media briefings on asylum seeker issues in an attempt to avoid public and media scrutiny – 14 January 2014
80. Politicises the national school curriculum by appointing a former Liberal staffer and a Coalition supporter, both critics of the current curriculum to conduct a review – 10 January 2014.
79. Directs that people already found to be refugees who arrived by boat be given the lowest priority for family reunion – 8 January 2014
78. Fails to contradict or take any action against a member of his government, Senator Cory Bernardi, who makes divisive statements about: abortion, “non-traditional” families and their children, same sex couples, couples who use IVF and calls for parts of WorkChoices to be reintroduced – 6 January 2014
77. Devastates Australia’s contribution to overseas aid by cutting $4.5 billion from the budget, causing vital programs supporting those in extreme poverty in our region to collapse – 1 January 2014
76. Drastically reduces tax breaks for small business and fails to publicise it – 1 January 2014
75. Refuses to support jobs at SPC at the cost of hundreds of jobs – 27 December 2013
74. Appoints Tim Wilson, a Liberal Party member and Policy Director of a right-wing think tank to the position of Commissioner at the Human Rights Commission even though this think tank argued for the Commission to be abolished – 23 December 2013
73. Approves private health fund premium increases of an average 6.2% a year – 23 December 2013
72. Fails to provide the promised customs vessel to monitor whaling operations in the Southern Ocean – 23 December 2013
71. Requests the delisting of World Heritage status for Tasmanian forests – 21 December 2013
70. Drastically dilutes consumer protections and transparency requirements for financial planners, including abolishing the requirement they put their clients interests first – 20 December 2013
69. Scraps the Home Energy Saver Scheme which helps struggling low income households cut their electricity bills – 17 December 2013
68. Defunds the Public Interest Advocacy Centre whose objectives are to work for a fair, just and democratic society by taking up legal cases public interest issues – 17 December 2013
67. Defunds the Environmental Defenders Office which is a network of community legal centres providing free advice on environmental law – 17 December 2013
66. Axes funding for animal welfare – 17 December 2013
65. Abolishes the AusAID graduate program costing 38 jobs – 17 December 2013
64. Cuts Indigenous legal services by $13.4 million. This includes $3.5 million from front line domestic violence support services, defunding the National legal service and abolishing all policy and law reform positions across the country – 17 December 2013
63. Abolishes the position of co-ordinator-general for remote indigenous services – 17 December 2013
62. Changes name of NDIS “launch sites” to “trial sites” and flags cuts to funding – 17 December 2013
61. Abolishes the National Office for Live Music along with the live music ambassadors – 17 December 2013
60. Cuts $2.5 million from community radio – 17 December 2013
59. Weakened the ministerial code of conduct to let ministers keep shares in companies – 16 December 2013
58. Disbands the independent Immigration Health Advisory Group for asylum seekers – 16 December 2013
57. Axes $4.5 million from charities and community groups for the Building Multicultural Communities Program – 13 December 2013
56. Starts dismantling Australia’s world leading marine protection system – 13 December 2013
55. Scraps the COAG Standing Council on Environment and Water – 13 December 2013
54. Breaks its NBN election promise of giving all Australians access to 25 megabits per second download speeds by 2016 – 12 December 2013
53. Overturns the “critically endangered” listing of the Murray Darling Basin – 11 December 2013
52. Dares Holden to leave Australia. Holden announces closure which costs Australian workers 50 000 jobs – 11 December 2013
51. Approves Clive Palmer’s mega coal mine in the Galilee Basin which opponents say will severely damage Great Barrier Reef – 11 December 2013
50. Demands that the few childcare workers who got pay rises “hand them back” – 10 December 2013
49. Approves the largest coal port in the world in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area – 10 December 2013
48. Removes the community’s right to challenge decisions where the government has ignored expert advice on threatened species impacts – 9 December 2013
47. Downgrades national environment laws by giving approval powers to state premiers – 9 December 2013
46. Undermines Australia’s democracy by signing a free trade agreement with South Korea allowing corporations to sue the Australian Government – 6 December 2013
45. Damages our diplomatic relationship with our nearest neighbour East Timor – 5 December 2013
44. Repeals the pokie reform legislation achieved in the last parliament to combat problem gambling – 4 December 2013
43. Suspends the Wage Connect program, despite it being proven to deliver good outcomes for unemployed people – 3 December 2013
42. Axes funding to the Alcohol and Other Drugs Council of Australia, forcing the 46 year old organisation to close – 27 November 2013
41. Back-flips twice on Gonski, reversing a commitment to a ‘unity ticket’ and failing to deliver equitable education funding – 25 November 2013
40. Shifts Australia’s position at the UN on Israeli settlements – 25 November 2013
39. Damages our diplomatic relationship with the Indonesian Government by refusing to apologise for tapping the phones of their President, his wife and senior Government officials – 23 November 2013
38. Converts crucial Start-Up Scholarships into loans, increasing the debt of 80,000 higher education students by $1.2 billion – 21 November 2013
37. Gifts two navy patrol boats to the Sri Lankan government to stop asylum seekers fleeing the Sri Lankan government – 17 November 2013
36. Introduces a Bill to impose on workers who are elected onto unpaid union committees huge financial penalties and jail terms for breeches of new compliance obligations – 14 November 2013
35. Condones torture by foreign governments by saying “sometimes in difficult circumstances, difficult things happen” – 14 November 2013
34. Hides information from the Parliament and the people about the government’s treatment of asylum seekers – 13 November 2013
33. Separates a refugee mother from her newborn baby – 10 November 2013
32. Cuts 600 jobs at the CSIRO – 8 November 2013
31. Abolishes Insurance Reform Advisory Group which provided a forum for industry and consumer bodies to discuss insurance industry reform – 8 November 2013
30. Abolishes the Maritime Workforce Development Forum which was an industry body working to build a sustainable skills base for the maritime industry – 8 November 2013
29. Abolishes the High Speed Rail Advisory Group whose job it was to advise Governments on the next steps on implementing high speed rail for eastern Australia – 8 November 2013
28. Abolishes the Advisory Panel on the Marketing in Australia of Infant Formula which for 21 years monitored compliance of industry to agreements on marketing infant formula – 8 November 2013
27. Abolishes the Antarctic Animal Ethics Committee who ensured research on animals in the Antarctic complies with Australian standards – 8 November 2013
26. Abolished the National Steering Committee on Corporate Wrongdoing that for 21 years worked to make sure the law was effectively enforced on corporate criminals – 8 November 2013
25. Abolishes the National Inter-country Adoption Advisory Council which provided expert advice on overseas adoption – 8 November 2013
24. Abolishes International Legal Services Advisory Council which was responsible for working to improve the international performance of Australia’s legal services – 8 November 2013
23. Abolishes the Commonwealth Firearms Advisory Council a group of experts in gun crime and firearms which was set up after the Port Arthur massacre – 8 November 2013
22. Abolishes Australian Animals Welfare Advisory Committee a diverse group of experts advising the Agriculture Minister on animal welfare issues – 8 November 2013
21. Abolishes the National Housing Supply Council which provided data and expert advice on housing demand, supply and affordability – 8 November 2013
20. Abolishes the Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing, established to help address the challenges the country faces as the number of older Australians grows – 8 November 2013
19. Refuses to offer support to manufacturing in Tasmania, despite requests and warnings. Caterpillar announces the move of 200 jobs from Burnie to Thailand, costing around 1000 local jobs – 5 November 2013
18. Provides $2.2 million legal aid for farmers and miners to fight native title claims – 1 November 2013
17. Abolishes the 40 year old AusAID costing hundreds of jobs – 1 November 2013
16. Launches a successful High Court which strikes down the ACT Marriage Equality laws invalidating the marriages of many people and ensuring discrimination against same-sex couples continues – 23 October 2013
15. Denies there is a link between climate change and more severe bush fires and accuses a senior UN official was “talking through their hat” – 23 October 2013
14. Appoints the head of the Business Council of Australia to a “Commission of Audit” to recommend cuts to public spending – 22 October 2013
13. Cuts compensation to the victims of bushfires – 21 October 2013
12. Instructs public servants and detention centre staff to call asylum seekers “illegals” – 20 October 2013
11. Appoints Howard era Australian Building & Construction Commission (ABCC) Director to help reinstate the ABCC with all its previous oppressive powers over construction workers – 17 October 2013
10. Axes the Major Cities Unit a Government agency with 10 staff which provided expert advice on urban issues in our 18 biggest cities – 24 September 2013
9. Fails to “stop the boats”. Hides the boats instead – 23 September 2013
8. Scraps the Social Inclusion Board, which had been established to guide policy on the reduction of poverty in Australia – 19 September 2013
7. Abolishes the Climate Commission – 19 September 2013
6. Appoints himself Minister for Women – 16 September 2013
5. Appoints only one woman into his cabinet and blames the women for his decision, saying he appoints “on merit”– 16 September 2013
4. Abolishes key ministerial positions of climate change and science – 16 September 2013
3. Breaks his promise to spend his first week with an Aboriginal community –
14 September 2012
2. Takes away pay rises for childcare workers – 13 September 2013
1. Takes away pay rises from aged care workers – 13 September 2013

If you haven’t read Dickens, you’re not qualified to teach Chemistry!

 

“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

Benjamin Franklin. (Often attributed to Albert Einstein who was quoting Franklin)

A few years ago there was a suggestion that the number of novels that Victorian Year 12 English students could be reduced by one. There was an outcry, and the proposal was dropped.

Andrew Bolt was particularly scathing about the idea that students be allowed to study a film or a play, instead of a novel, and he devoted a whole article to how we would be losing our culture if the study of Shakespeare was no longer mandated in Year 12 English. I sent him a comment – which he never published, of course – where I pointed out that Shakespeare had only ever been compulsory in Year 12 Literature, and that was several years ago. And where I made the rather important point that Shakepeare actually wrote plays and sonnetts, not novels.

Whether not studying Dickens and the Classics actually destroys civilisation as we know it, however, is a debate for another time. I just bring this up because the Bolt example is fairly typical of what happens when non-educators start talking about the education system. It’s not that I don’t think that they have a right to make input, it’s just that their input needs to be balanced against what actually happens in schools, and what anyone with any experience in education can predict about particular proposals. Take, the recent NSW suggestion to make Maths compulsory in Year 12.

Ok, I’m sure that the first reaction of a large number of people is that we need to improve our Maths skills, so this is a damn fine idea. So before we continue, I’d like to ask a simple question.

maths question

Right. I’ve just divided you into two classes of people. There are those, who are can answer that and those who can’t.

If you can, I suspect you probably think that compulsory maths is a good idea. If you can’t, you’re probably thinking either it isn’t a good idea, or why are you asking me for, I’m not going to do Year 12?

To those who can answer, I would like to say that I value your opinion, and I’ll respect it even more, if you spend six weeks trying to explain trigonometry to the kids who wanted to drop Maths at the end of Year 10.

The trouble with suggestions such as making Maths compulsory to the end of Year 12 is that very little thought is given to the actuality of doing something like this. Granted, there are a number of students who lack numeracy skills when they leave school, but another year or two of Maths isn’t going to improve them, unless there’s a totally different approach to the one that failed to give them adequate numeracy skills in the eleven years of school that they’d already completed.

While I was a teacher, I spent a number of years where I was responsible for students making a change to the subjects studied at senior level. Every year towards the end of first semester, I would have at least one conversation that went something like this:

“I want to drop Maths and pick up something else?”

“Why?”

“I’m failing miserably. I’ve never been any good at Maths.”

“Then why did you pick it?”

“My parents thought I should keep my options open.”

At this point I was always tempted to ask how parents thought that failing Maths at Year 11 was keeping one’s options open. Or did they think that suddenly the student would decide that a career as an engineer was suddenly a better option than one of the areas where this student was actually demonstrating a skill. (As an aside, I actually remember a parent ringing me when their son had just dropped Business Management. “English, Music, Drama? Where’s the potential career in that?” Given that the father HAD signed the permission form for the change of subject, I don’t know what he wanted me to say. Anyway, every time I read an article or see the son on TV, I think that he seems to have worked out a better career path than if he’d done Accounting, Business Management and Maths. We’re not all the same!)

So how exposing these kids to another year or two of maths is expected to improve the numeracy skills of the nation is meant to work, I don’t know. The vast majority of students who are a competent at Maths continue with it. In my entire teaching career, I never heard any kid say that they wished they’d continued with their maths, but I heard plenty say that they didn’t know why they did.

As for the logistics…

How, when they already have a shortage of maths teachers, do they intend to staff the extra classes?

But I guess problems with numeracy isn’t just limited to the general population!

Not Another Post About Climate Change!!!

 

How many Andrew Bolts does it take to change a light bulb?
Answer: None, because it’s daytime and the past few hours have been getting lighter. There’s no proof of the need for lightbulb change, and besides, what difference would changing one lightbulb make. There’s no need to change a lightbulb until everyone else does!

On Friday, I wrote a response to John McLean’s article in “The Age” in which he questioned the IPCC. If you read the response, you’ll note that I raised questions about the funding of the “International Climate Science Coalition” and whether, when one looks at its core values, one can really say that they are scientific in nature. I also made the point that the arguments used by many who wish to dispute climate change had a very similar ring to the arguments used by the tobacco industry in the 1950s. At no point did I suggest a link between the tobacco industry and the “International Climate Science Coalition”.

As a humble blogger, I was surprised to receive the attention of both the writer of the article and the executive director of the “Coalition” within a couple of hours. The writer of the article used all his skills of persuasion to counter my arguments:

“What a pathetic piece from Rossleigh. Such attention to detail! The Age spells my surname correctly but Rossleigh gets it wrong despite the bio extract from The Age. Now let me see if I understand Rossleigh’s correctly … I think the claim is that I am wrong because I am a member of a certain coalition that can, with some contortions, be linked to the legal defence of tobacco companies. Hmmm … surely if Rossleigh figured that my claims about the IPCC, UNFCCC and others were wrong then surely those errors would have been discussed here instead of the pathetic ad hominem attack.

“I provide my URL so that any who is interested (and somehow I doubt that many people who haunt this blog will) can read my other documents including the unheard of action of a scientific journal not allowing authors the right of reply.”

I also provide Mr McLean’s URL.

Mr Harris, the executive director also seemed to think that, while it was entirely reasonable to question the motives and funding of climate sciencists, to question his organisation shouldn’t be allowed, and that it was an “ad hominem” attack. (Can questioning an organisation be an “ad hominem” attack? I’ll let the pedants work that one out.) He made a number of comments – apparently he doesn’t have anything better to do – but among them was this:

Kaye Lee, you have not answered my charge:

“Please show us exactly where it has been demonstrated that a large majority of climate experts who study the causes of climate change agree that: human produced carbon dioxide emissions is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming (and other deliterious climate change).”

The reason no one properly demonstrates this is because the idea of consensus on this topic among these people is an urban legend and of no merit what-so-ever.

To which I replied:

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

Note: it does only say “very likely” because scientists often remain circumspect about possibilities. They establish hypotheses which can be disproved. They do not have “core principles” which begin with conclusions such as we find on the ICSC website.

Of course, that site was not “evidence”, because as he put it:

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus is simply a statement by an official government body, rossleighbrisbane. Neither it, nor the sources they cite “demonstrate that a large majority of climate experts who study the causes of climate change agree that: human produced carbon dioxide emissions is causing, or will in the foreseeable future cause, dangerous global warming (and other deliterious climate change).”

Now, part of me would like to encourage you to have a look at the site and make up your own mind. But, then I know that any source one finds on the internet can be countered with another source. Or the figures disputed. And, let’s not forget that while Harris demands that one finds information to back this “urban myth”, he also concludes that it doesn’t have “any merit what-so-ever. (sic)”. So one could waste an enormous amount of time attempting to prove that the majority of climate scientists generally agree, only to be told that it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re right.

Particularly if you start from the point that we must not trust the government or climate scientists, who are accused of indulging in rhetoric without regard to facts. On the other hand, in an article co-authored with Dr Tim Ball, Harris asserts:

Coal-fired electricity must be replaced with “clean energy” to save the climate, they still say. This approach completely disregards what happened in Europe when that approach was tried: economies collapsed and people froze to death, driven into poverty by unmanageable energy bills.

And here I was blaming the GFC for the economies of Europe collapsing!

Of course, the thing that is becoming more and more obvious is that the climate deniers always try to set the terms of the “debate”. For example, unless you can prove that a majority of climate scientists agree we need to do nothing, or unless you can prove that acting now on climate change will make any difference, we might as well wait. Or show us what China’s doing! And why are you kicking that way, when the goal posts have been shifted?

But as with smoking – and I’m not drawing any links between the Heartland Institute and tobacco here – it really doesn’t matter who believes what. In the end, it was found to be harmful. (Perhaps, some may argue that the science isn’t conclusive here either!) If you’d given up smoking when the first reports came out you’d probably have lived longer. I say probably before someone points out Uncle Fred gave up smoking and two days later got hit by a truck!.

It’s difficult not to allow the important questions to be sidetracked. What does the evidence suggest? What are the potential consequences of taking action? What are the potential consequences of inaction? What needs to be done?

In Australia, in the debate over the ETS, Abbott said that it would be better to have a simple tax. When Labor introduced a carbon tax, suddenly Direct Action is better. No wonder many people started to switch off and decide the whole thing was too hard.

And for those of you wondering about the “Direct INaction Plan”. Here’s the latest. Direct Action.

Fruitcakes of a Feather

I have been on an interesting journey through the world of climate change denial and I would like to share some of my travel highlights with you.

I started with my favourite video of well-known climate change denier and world government alarmist, Lord Christopher Monckton (a must watch if you haven’t seen it). He is the pin-up boy of the mining industry, a man whose “expert” opinion is often quoted by Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt. The meeting is in the boardroom of the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation, a free-market think-tank founded by west Australian mining magnate Ron Manners. Monckton explains how they need to control the media to achieve their goals. Interestingly, not long after this meeting took place, Gina Rinehart bought $192 million worth of shares in Fairfax (the publisher of Brisbane Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and many regional newspapers and city-based radio stations) to take her share in the company to about 14 per cent.

Monckton applauds the work of Andrew Bolt, and also Joanne Codling who is better known by her stage name, Jo Nova, which she adopted in 1998 when she was preparing to host a children’s television program. Jo Nova is married to David Evans and she and her husband joined Lord Monckton on a speaking tour in Australia in 2011. The advertising for the tour describes Nova and Evans as “leading Australian scientists” who will, along with headliner Monckton, explain how “the carbon tax will bankrupt Australia” and show how “the science does not justify it.”

Let’s start with Monckton, the third Viscount of Benchley, a hereditary title in the United Kingdom. Contrary to Monckton’s claims, he is not a member of the House of Lords in the Parliament of Britain. In fact, when Monckton persisted with the lie, the House of Lords took the unprecedented step of publishing an open letter to him, demanding that he cease and desist.

Monckton is not a scientist. He has a degree in classics and a diploma in journalism. Nevertheless, the Heartland Institute lists him as an expert with their organization, where they publish his posts on climate change. He is also a frequent speaker at the Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change. He is listed as a “scientist” in American Senator Inhofe’s report claiming more than 1,000 scientists disputed there’s a scientific consensus on climate change. He has TWICE been asked by Republicans to testify about climate change before committees of the U.S. Congress

Monckton is the Chief Policy Advisor to climate change denial lobby group Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI). His bio on their site stated that:

“His contribution to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report in 2007 – the correction of a table inserted by IPCC bureaucrats that had overstated tenfold the observed contribution of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets to sea-level rise – earned him the status of Nobel Peace Laureate. His Nobel prize pin, made of gold recovered from a physics experiment, was presented to him by the Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, New York, USA”

When Christopher Monckton was challenged about this during a visit to Australia in early 2010 he conceded that “it was a joke, a joke” and “never meant to be taken seriously.” The Sydney Morning Herald noted that despite this, he had made the same claim with a “straight face” on the Alan Jones show one day prior, and the claim remained on the SPPI website until 2012.

He also describes himself as a “chief policy advisor” to former British PM Margaret Thatcher, and frequently introduces himself as her “chief science advisor” when interviewed by the conservative media.

Monckton has been quoted as saying “I gave her advice on science as well as other policy from 1982-1986, two years before the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was founded,” that he was “the only one who knew any science” and that “it was I who – on the prime minister’s behalf – kept a weather eye on the official science advisers to the government, from the chief scientific adviser downward.” Bob Ward in the Guardian investigated these claims and found them to be false.

Monckton claimed that he has developed a cure for Graves’ Disease, AIDS, Multiple Sclerosis, the flu, and the common cold. This is no joke – he actually filed an application to patent a “therapeutic treatment” in 2009.

I could go on and on, including when he dressed up in Arabian clothes and pretended to be a delegate from Myanmar at the UN climate change talks (from which he has since been permanently banned), or when he described Professor Ross Garnaut as a fascist and said in a German accent “Heil Hitler! on we go”, or his launch of the fringe political group Rise Up Australia, or when he threatened to sue the University of Tasmania, but I think you already get my drift on the credibility of this “expert”.

Moving on to Jo Nova. Nova received a Bachelor of Science from the University of Western Australia majoring in micro and molecular biology. She also received a Graduate Certificate in Scientific Communication from the Australian National University in 1989, and went on to host children’s science shows. She loves to do the denier shuffle on her blog but seems to not care at all about the validity of her sources.

Ms Nova’s husband David Evans “attended the University of Sydney for five years from 1979 where he did science and engineering, and then spent a further five years at Stanford University at Palo Alto in California, doing a PhD in electrical engineering.” According to his biographical note, Evans rhetorically describes himself as a “Rocket Scientist”. While Evans use of the term was rhetorical, one article on a website for the conspiracy-minded took it literally and headed an article about Evans claiming “Top Rocket Scientist: No Evidence CO2 Causes Global Warming”.

Evans has made a number of claims about the role of banking institutions throughout history and subscribes to the conspiracy theory that “climate change is merely a cover for a massive power play.”

I fail to see how these two could be described as “leading Australian scientists” or what their qualifications are to join the climate change denial talk circuit as experts. This excellent article from Watching the Deniers details the claims made by Nova and Evans over the years. And they call US alarmists! Paranoia anyone?

So who pays these people to present their “expert” views? That trail leads to people like Gina Rinehart and Ron Manners, and groups like the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC), and the Galileo Movement.

The Galileo Movement was started by two retired men, one was formerly paid by mining companies and the other is a former engineer who owns an air-conditioning company. They apparently formed with the express intention of stopping the carbon tax. Alan Jones is their patron and the usual suspects are named as “expert advisers”, a list which until recently included Andrew Bolt. (When Bolt dumps you you KNOW you are out there.)

The Galileo Movement are advertising an upcoming talk by radio talkback personality John MacRae, a regular on Alan Jones show, about how banks and governments are ripping you off, and Malcolm Roberts, their project manager, who “will speak for 20 minutes on government abuse of taxpayer funding through corruption of climate science”. It seems Roberts is also heavily embroiled in the banking conspiracy theory.

So my tour has really been a circle, revisiting the same places again and again. Gina Rinehart, Lord Monckton, Andrew Bolt, Jo Nova, David Evans, Alan Jones, the Galileo Movement, Malcolm Roberts. The resources that are being devoted to this misinformation campaign are formidable. The arguments go “round, like a circle in a spiral and a wheel within a wheel.” Lies and obfuscation, cherry-picking data and repeating any claim regardless of its credibility or source.

The mad monk even appeared as a speaker with the even madder Monckton in Perth. If these are the people that our current government goes to for climate change advice, Lord save us. And I don’t mean the feathered loon variety.

Author’s note: This is one of a series of articles looking at the people who advise Tony Abbott. Others include AIMN articles, Who do you admire, Has anybody seen Tony’s envoy, Putting our First People last and Tony’s tame expert.

 

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Should the Government ban The Greens?

A few years ago, the Howard Government introduced several anti-terrorism laws.

The Sedition Laws were strengthened. Now, sedition is one of those laws that is, like beauty and bias, very much in the eye of the beholder. (I think it’s worth pointing out that the most famous sedition cases in Australian history involved the Eureka Rebellion, and the Shearer’s Strike, both well over a hundred years ago.) To quote Greg Hunt’s authorative source, Wikipedia,

“Sedition is In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority”.

Some people expressed concern that, given our “war on terrorism” how exactly do you define the “enemy”, and the Australian laws could, therefore, be used to suppress legitimate criticism of the Australian Government. The response of the Howard Government was basically to assure us that we shouldn’t worry about the actual wording of the law, because we could trust them to use it “responsibly”. I argued at the time that not all future governments may be as trustworthy.

There were a number of amendments added a safeguard and, not being a lawyer, I can’t vouch for how strongly they protect the individual’s right to criticise the government. But from my limited legal knowledge, the safeguards use a similar “good faith” exemption to the Racial Vilification Laws.

When John Pilger made comments about the occupying forces in Iraq being “legitimate targets” for the Iraqi people, many people were outraged. While I’m sure that nobody in Iraq was expecting a surge in Iraqis joining the insurgents thanks to Pilger giving his permission, it was perceived by many that his comments bordered on sedition and there were suggestions that he could be charged.

Andrew Bolt had this to say about John Pilger while the debate raged.

On Wednesday Pilger appeared on ABC TV’s Lateline to promote his noxious views. This apologist for terrorists – this moral pygmy – is … welcomed into an ABC Studio and promoted by SBS …

Not all the enemies of our civilisation are Islamic or foreigners. Many are people we pay to defend our culture, but, we find, betray it instead.

— Sunday Herald Sun, 14 March 2004

And, of course, part of the concern of media organisations was that they could be considered guilty of sedition for simply reporting what someone had said. Bolt – it seems – supported the view that the ABC were equally enemies of the state for simply reporting Pilger’s views.

Sedition, however, wasn’t the only change implemented by Howard. ASIO were given permission to hold people for questioning without charge for a period of 48 hours if it believed that they were about to commit a terrorist act, or had information about a terrorist act. Without going through all tweaking of this detention power there are two important provisions that are still the case today. Not only are you not permitted to inform anyone of the details of your interview, but you are not allowed to inform anyone of your detention. Neither is your lawyer. No, not your family. Not your employer. Nobody. It is illegal.

Of course, this makes perfect sense when you imagine ASIO dealing with the person planning to commit a terrorist act. It may even make sense if you’re talking about their next door neighbour who have been interviewed by ASIO to find out if they’ve seen anything.

The trouble is that ASIO may not always be the organisation it is now. Just as the Howard Government was not going to go on forever, what if – as ridiculous as it sounds – a future government appointed lackeys to the head of ASIO and declared that certain political opponents were “the enemy”?

No, of course, it won’t happen. This isn’t the sort of thing that happens in a country like Australia. It happens in the sort of country where people are locked up without charge. (Oh, wait, that’s us now, but that’s ok because they’re coming to the country illegally!) But my point is that the only thing stopping it from happening is the fact that we all know that Tony Abbott won’t declare The Greens an illegal, seditious group any time soon. The actual law enables a Government to “silence” it’s critics fairly easily.

Of course, the strange thing is that it’s not these laws that’s attrecting the attention of the IPA and complany. It’s the Racial Vilification law.

And exactly, who’s been detained or jailed under the Racial Vilification Laws? I can’t find any media story that records anything more than a fine, or a demand for a retraction of incorrect information.

Who’s been detained under the Anti-terrorism laws? Well, how would we know, unless the Government decides to tell us?

Greens

Message Control

I think we all agree that Labor shot itself in the foot by using the media to broadcast their internal squabbles. Conceding that, far greater forces were at play.

The other seemingly obvious cause was Labor’s failure to get their message across. Their achievements in government were significant, their policies were vastly superior (in most cases), and their ministers, if not overly charismatic, were at least competent and knowledgeable in their portfolios.

We all watched with increasing concern as they allowed the Coalition, ably abetted by the Murdoch press, to dictate the message. Carbon pricing became a “lie” and a “toxic tax”. Rather than answering this campaign with the obvious advantages of carbon pricing in dealing with climate change, they went into defence mode and we now find the carbon tax being blamed for everything to do with the economy, investment, manufacturing, jobs and cost of living.

It doesn’t seem to matter that the economy has a AAA credit rating, that we have had record investment, and that the average household is $14 000 a year better off now than they were in 2007. It doesn’t seem to matter that, until very recently, the mainstream business community was behind carbon pricing. It doesn’t seem to matter what reasons businesses give for closing, we are told it’s the carbon tax. And even after the repeal of the carbon tax is underway, and we still see businesses closing, it’s still the fault of the carbon tax.

In an astonishing transformation, we saw Tony Abbott move from an attack dog to Prime Minister, from misogynist to Minister for Women, from telling Aborigines they should pick up rubbish to crowning himself Minister for Indigenous Affairs.

The Opposition had a strategy to keep the focus on the Government, to present a small target, to keep it simple and to exploit fear and populism. In other words, they controlled the message. They began the campaign with the infamous headless chook ad but when it was panned as childish and inappropriate they quickly morphed into the ‘adults’ carrying out a positive campaign warning us that Labor would get nasty. Actually, looking back, the ‘negative’ ads from Labor were quite prophetic.

So the Coalition won, promising us transparency and accountability – no surprises. They assumed they would be able to control the message in government as they had so successfully in opposition. Tony began by shutting the Indonesian press out of his first press conference on their soil. It did not go over well. His tough guy rhetoric for the domestic market has not been well received on the international stage.

His obsession with axing the tax might have done well for Tony here where he, along with people like Andrew Bolt and Alan Jones, have convinced many people that climate change is crap. In the rest of the world his actions are being condemned and his rhetoric is being drowned out by the latest IPCC report and the growing commitment of other world leaders to take action on climate change.

In a further attempt to control the message, all interviews with Ministers have to be approved by the Prime Minister’s Office 24 hours prior to the interview. Scott Morrison is perfecting hiding the boats and Joe Hockey won’t tell us why the debt ceiling needs to be increased. Julie Bishop refuses to disclose details about any of her meetings with foreign leaders and the briefings from departments to the incoming government will not be released.

Newly appointed head of NBNco, former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski, has certainly changed his message from 2003 when Telstra told the Senate Committee that the copper network was at “5 minutes to midnight” to now, when he told them it is “robust”. He has also been instructed not to talk to the media.

Experienced public servants have been sacked in their droves and an ‘Independent’ review panels have been set up to look at … well … just about everything. The trouble is that these review panels are composed of ex-Liberals and businessmen who have already expressed very strong views about what they are supposed to be reviewing, and as they have only been given a few months to prepare their advice, they will not be consulting with other concerned bodies. I would suggest these panels have been selected because they already know the message they are supposed to give.

We have BHP advising on climate change, the BCA which represents banks and mining companies doing the Commission of Audit, the former head of the Commonwealth Bank reviewing the finance sector, and one of the fiercest critics of Labor’s NBN, columnist for The Australian Henry Ergas, on the three man panel to do a cost-benefit analysis of the NBN.

And now we having Tony Abbott’s speeches being airbrushed from history – or is it is lies being airbrushed from history? – and his ‘excuse’ for the back flip on school funding highlights what could best be described as a classic case of ‘gaslighting’ (as pointed out by one of The AIMN’s readers):

“We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought that we made, or the promise that some people might have liked us to make”.

From Wikipedia: “Gaslighting is a form of mental abuse in which false information is presented with the intent of making a victim doubt his or her own memory, perception and sanity”. With the amount of message control we are being fed that certainly appears to be a technique of the Abbott Government.

Eric Hoffer once said “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves”. With the growing reach of the fifth estate, it is becoming harder to control the message and there is little excuse for self-deception. However, we should remember that:

“If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.”

Thomas Sowell.

We need to put message control into the control of the right people.

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What If Bolt Had Been Given The Job…

Andrew Bolt’s Application to Host Media Watch

TO Mark Scott, ABC managing director:

…Don’t assume I’m not available. Hear that ripping sound? That was my contract for my Network 10 show.

Mark, I want you to know I stand ready to serve when your current host, Jonathan Holmes, stands down by the end of the month, as I read…

From Andrew Bolt’s Blog, 2nd May, 2013

Sources tell me that Andrew Bolt wasn’t actually considered for the job of Media Watch host as there were a few technicalities with his application. The first was that he never actually submitted it – he only shared it via his blog. There’s a longstanding tradition in applying for jobs in this country that one doesn’t do it in via a national newspaper. (The exception to this being when one wishes to take over as leader of a political party. Then one may declare that one is available, that one has no intention of challenging for the leadership or simply tell a journalist that – off the record – there’ll be a challenge within weeks.)

So what if Bolt had actually applied and been successful? I suspect we’d have got something like the following:

Hello, I’m Andrew Bolt, welcome to Media Watch.

After October’s ridiculous attempt by climate alarmists to politicise the NSW fires and to link them to their scare campaign, we now get this from the ABC’s news bulletin:

“HEATWAVE LINKED TO CLIMATE CHANGE”

The bulletin then went on to quote some Professor without pointing out that this person had a vested interest in the topic. He has been studying climate science for the past twenty-three years. Hardly what I’d call a disinterested party. Of course, the usual suspects jumped on this story. From a newspaper which I won’t name because of the ABC’s ridiculous no brand names because it contravenes advertising policy, which, by the way, previous hosts of this show used to flout quite regularly, but my freedom of speech was suppressed when I just mentioned in last week’s show what a great drink coke was and thanked Mercedes for the great deal they gave me on the car:

“MORE HOT WEATHER TO COME”

This hysterical article then went on to predict another five days of temperatures above thirty degrees, ignoring the evidence that last night cooled to a mere twenty-two degrees. Then having softened us up, the opinion page had this letter:

“When is this direct-action policy of Abbott’s going to start? This hot weather should get us all thinking.

Since when did weather have anything to do with the climate? This completely overlooks that fact that we’ve had weather going back to the time that Captain Cook first discovered this uninhabited land. And as for the letter writer’s obvious left wing bias in demanding thinking, well, it should be no surprise that the writer of this letter had, in fact, completed his secondary education. These sort of academics are good at twisting arguments, but most of my readers are down to earth folk who intuitively know that I’m right.

Of course, the ABC has been trying to suggest the world is warming for decades. Such as this from 1972:

 

 

Admittedly, that was the American ABC, but the point remains. Of course, we’re used to the Bolshevik view coming from the ABC, but now the so called “free press” has joined in. The latest IPCC evidence shows that these ‘warmists’ are just plain wrong. I call for all journalists at non-Murdoch owned papers to be sacked and the ABC to be privatised immediately.

Now, unto a rather troubling matter. Again, there have been complaints about Alan Jones getting some minor detail wrong and calls for him to be removed from the air. These sort of politically correct attempts at censorship must be stopped. So what if he’s a few degrees or a couple of hundred percentage points out – this makes no difference to his actual argument that certain people need to take a good hard look at themselves and would benefit from a sound caning. As an ex-private school boarding master, Alan knows all about the benefits of that. Freedom of speech is one of our most important principles.

Until next time, I’ve been Andrew Bolt and you people listen to the ABC so you must be wrong.

Good Night.

 

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Well, that was embarrassing, Andrew …

27 October 2013 (2:29pm) was an auspicious moment for commentator, media tart and Murdoch minion Andrew Bolt. It was the moment in his professional life where he finally cast-off any lingering doubt as to his status as an intellectually dishonest dunderhead. In an entry to his Herald Sun blog, he attempted to simultaneously defend Environment…

Read more

Crap, Hogwash, Wikipedia and Other Strong Evidence

“I mean in the end this whole thing is a question of fact, not faith, or it should be a question of fact not faith and we can discover whether the planet is warming or not by measurement. And it seems that notwithstanding the dramatic increases in man made CO2 emissions over the last decade, the world’s warming has stopped. Now admittedly we are still pretty warm by recent historical standards but there doesn’t appear to have been any appreciable warming since the late 1990s.”

Tony Abbott: A REALIST’S APPROACH TO CLIMATE CHANGE Speech – July, 2009

From Abbott’s Interview with Andrew Bolt:

Bolt: (Volunteering to fight) the fires. Was there an element of running away from the office?

PM: Ha! Mate, I got up to the station at 4pm Saturday and I got back to the station at 10 Sunday morning. So there’s no question of running away from the office, because the office is closed then. The office is closed.

AB: I’ve been struck by the insanity of the reaction in the media and outside, particularly linking the fires to global warming and blaming you for making them worse potentially by scrapping the carbon tax.

PM: I suppose, you might say, that they are desperate to find anything that they think might pass as ammunition for their cause, but this idea that every time we have a fire or a flood it proves that climate change is real is bizarre, ’cause since the earliest days of European settlement in Australia, we’ve had fires and floods, and we’ve had worse fires and worse floods in the past than the ones we are currently experiencing. And the thing is that at some point in the future, every record will be broken, but that doesn’t prove anything about climate change. It just proves that the longer the period of time, the more possibility of extreme events … The one in 500 year flood is always a bigger flood than the one in 100 year flood.

Bolt: The ABC, though, has run on almost every current affairs show an almost constant barrage of stuff linking climate change to these fires.

Abbott: That is complete hogwash.

Bolt: It is time to really question the bias of the ABC?

Abbott: But people are always questioning the “bias” of the ABC.

Later in the same interview:

PM: I would say that there tends to be an ABC view of the world, and it’s not a view of the world that I find myself in total sympathy with. But, others would say that there’s a News Limited view of the world.

From “The most depressing Discovery about the Brain, Ever”

“In other words, say goodnight to the dream that education, journalism, scientific evidence, media literacy or reason can provide the tools and information that people need in order to make good decisions. It turns out that in the public realm, a lack of information isn’t the real problem. The hurdle is how our minds work, no matter how smart we think we are. We want to believe we’re rational, but reason turns out to be the ex post facto way we rationalize what our emotions already want to believe.

For years my go-to source for downer studies of how our hard-wiring makes democracy hopeless has been Brendan Nyhan, an assistant professor of government at Dartmouth.

Nyan and his collaborators have been running experiments trying to answer this terrifying question about American voters: Do facts matter?

The answer, basically, is no. When people are misinformed, giving them facts to correct those errors only makes them cling to their beliefs more tenaciously.”

And just in case you missed it at the time:

“I am, as you know, hugely unconvinced by the so-called settled science on climate change.” (Tony Abbott, quoted on the “ABC 7.30 Report” (27 July 2009).

People are entitled to their own point of view. We all accept that. It’s a free country, after all. I’m sure that Andrew Bolt would agree that we’re all entitled to express a point of view. Even if it’s demonstrably wrong. For goodness sake, if Bolt had to rely on facts for his point of view, he wouldn’t have a column.

The trouble with the exchange of opinions is that it very rarely goes beyond, “You’re wrong and I’m right, therefore nothing you have to say could change my mind.”

And so I find our beloved leader’s comments – the ones I highlighted – in the Bolt interview disturbing. Tony Abbott seems to be saying that extreme events aren’t evidence of anything, and it doesn’t matter how many we have, that’s just the nature of things. Records are made to be broken, after all.

This is fairly consistent with the way in which climate deniers view things. One extreme weather event is just the exception. Two is just coincidence. Three, well, that’s the norm – we have weather like this all the time.

Now, I think that there is a discussion to be had about how much of a link can be drawn between climate change and the current bushfires. And I have some sympathy for the view that maybe Adam Bandt could have timed his comments a little more sensitively. I can accept that we’ve always had large bushfires and that, in the distant past, some of them even occured in October.

However, I think that we need to actually look very closely at the evidence – even if it means hours on the computer looking up Wikipedia. To say, as one person wrote in response to the Climate Council’s Bushfires and Climate Change in Australia – The Facts (which suggested that bushfires in the last thirty years had been more frequent), that we had large bushfires in the past too. The person then went on to talk of three over the space of sixty years prior to 1983.

It’s difficult to argue about climate change when people like Bolt and Abbott seem to suggest that every event can be taken in isolation and therefore nothing is part of any pattern. Bolt may be right. There may be no significant warming. But he is no more of less qualified to assert his position than the bloke down at the pub who tells me that Greater Western Sydney will make next year’s Grand Final. He is not an expert and lacks formal training in the area – something that he is quick to point out about those he disagrees with. After arguing for years that the climate is actually cooling, Bolt jumped on the IPCC report which suggested the planet wasn’t WARMING as fast as they predicted, completely ignoring the fact that this went against his contention.

So, records are always being broken, according to the Prime Minister. Linking the fires to climate change is “complete hogwash”. We don’t need a Climate Commission to look at evidence. We know these things. Who needs a Science Minister? It’s either part of trade, or something you do at school. Science, itself, what’s that?

As for the Audit Commission, who thinks that they may recommend delaying or scaling back the Liberal’s Direct Action initiatives?

 

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Climate change questions and answers

Anyone who has read Andrew Bolt, The Australian, or listened to any shock jocks such as Alan Jones recently would have been overwhelmed with the number of rabid claims that climate change is a hoax, a left-wing conspiracy theory, or that any change stopped over a decade ago. Sadly, this is the view held by our mainstream media and even more sadly, our new government. Neither seem interested in the facts.

Just over a week ago the the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) published Questions and Answers: climate change where they addressed some of the common questions raised about the changing climate and the science involved in studying it.

The media ignored it. The government ignored it. And as a result, you probably don’t know about it. After all, it was nothing more than a collection of facts: facts that contradicted what the media and government would want us to believe.

Below, I have reproduced a condensed version of the CSIRO’s discussion:

What is climate change? (natural & human-induced)

Human-induced climate change, represents a raft of new challenges for this generation and those to come, through increases in extreme weather events and other changes, such as sea-level rise and ocean acidification.

Climate change will be superimposed on natural climate variability, leading to a change in the frequency, intensity and duration of extreme events.

Climate risk profiles will be altered and adaptation will be necessary to manage these new risks. Adaptation includes new management practices, engineering solutions, improved technologies and behavioural change.

How has climate changed in the past?

In Australia, surface temperatures on the land have been recorded at many sites since the mid to late 19th century.

By 1910, Australia had a reliable network of thermometers and the data they produced have been extensively analysed by the Bureau of Meteorology and scientists at CSIRO, Australian universities and international research institutions.

This reveals that since 1910, Australia’s annual-average daily maximum temperatures have increased by 0.75°C and the overnight minima by more than 1.1°C.

Since the 1950s, each decade has been warmer than the one before. We’ve also experienced an increase in record hot days and a decrease in record cold days across the country.

Why do sea levels change?

Average global sea levels have been rising consistently since 1880 (the earliest available robust estimates) largely in response to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and the consequent changes in the global climate.

There are two main processes behind long-term sea-level rises, which are a direct result of a warming climate.

Firstly, as the ocean has warmed the total volume of the ocean has increased through thermal expansion of water.

Secondly, water has been added to the oceans as a result of melting glaciers and ice sheets.

Sea levels began to rise in the 19th century and the rate of sea-level rise since the mid-19th century has been larger than the average rate during the previous two millennia.

Global-average sea levels are currently (between 1993 and 2010) rising at around 3.2mm per year, faster than during the 20th century as a whole.

How else are the oceans changing?

The heat content of the world’s oceans has increased during recent decades and accounts for more than 90 per cent of the total heat accumulated by the land, air and ocean since the 1970s.

This warming increases the volume of ocean waters and is a major contribution to sea-level rise. Ocean warming is continuing, especially in the top several hundred metres of the ocean.

Sea surface temperatures in the Australian region were very warm during 2010 and 2011, with temperatures in 2010 being the warmest on record. Sea surface temperatures averaged over the decades since 1900 have increased for every decade.

How is the composition of the atmosphere changing?

The concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2011 was 391 parts per million (ppm) – much higher than the natural range of 170 to 300 ppm during the past 800 000 years.

Global CO2 emissions are mostly from fossil fuels (more than 85 per cent), land use change, mainly associated with tropical deforestation (less than 10 per cent), and cement production and other industrial processes (about 4 per cent).

Energy generation continues to climb and is dominated by fossil fuels – suggesting emissions will grow for some time yet.

How is climate likely to change in the future?

With greenhouse gas emissions continuing to increase, we expect the warming trend of the past century to accelerate throughout this century. We also expect changes to rainfall patterns and to the frequency of extreme weather events like cyclones and droughts.

Average temperatures across Australia are projected to rise by 0.4 to 1.8°C by 2030, compared with the climate of 1990. By 2070, warming is projected to be 1.0 to 2.5°C for a low emissions scenario, and 2.2 to 5.0°C for a high emissions scenario.

Australians will experience this warming through an increase in the number of hot days and warm nights and a decrease in cool days and cold nights.

Climate models show that there may be less rainfall in southern areas of Australia during winter and in southern and eastern areas during spring. Wet years are likely to become less frequent and dry years and droughts more frequent.

Climate models suggest that rainfall near the equator will increase globally, but it’s not clear how rainfall may change in northern Australia.

Australia will also experience climate-related changes to extreme weather events. In most areas of the country, intense rainfall events will become more extreme.

Fire-weather risk is also likely to increase and fire seasons will be longer. And although it is likely that there will be fewer tropical cyclones in the Australian region, the proportion of intense cyclones may increase.

What is extreme weather and how is it changing?

The natural climate variability that underlies all extreme weather events is now influenced and altered by the effect of human-induced warming of the climate system.

Future climate change impacts will be experienced mostly through extreme events rather than gradual changes in mean temperature or rainfall.

Heatwaves, floods, fires and southern Australian droughts are expected to become more intense and more frequent. Frosts, snow and cyclones are expected to occur less often.

Extreme events and natural disasters place a huge burden on individuals, communities, industry and the government and have an enormous impact on Australia’s economy, social fabric and environment.

What are the impacts of climate change?

Australia is expected to experience an increase in extremely high temperatures, extreme fire weather, extreme rainfall events, tropical cyclone intensity, extreme sea levels, and droughts in southern areas.

A decrease in the frequency of extremely cold temperatures is expected, along with fewer tropical cyclones.

These changes will pose significant challenges for disaster risk management, water and food security, ecosystems, forestry, buildings, transport, energy, health and tourism.

For example, many animal and plant species may decline or become extinct, water resources are expected to decline in southern Australia, agricultural zones are likely to shift, coastal erosion and inundation is expected to occur more often, energy demand is likely to increase, snow cover will decline and heat-related deaths may rise.

Is the science settled?

In climate change science, robust findings include:

  • clear evidence for global warming and sea level rise over the past century
  • changes observed in many physical and biological systems are consistent with warming
  • due to the uptake of anthropogenic CO2 since 1750, ocean acidity has increased
  • most of the global average warming over the past 50 years is very likely due to anthropogenic greenhouse gas increases
  • global greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades, leading to further climate change
  • due to the time scales associated with climate processes and feedbacks, anthropogenic warming and sea level rise would continue for centuries even if greenhouse gas emissions were to be reduced sufficiently for atmospheric concentrations to stabilise
  • increased frequencies and intensities of some extreme weather events are very likely
  • systems and sectors at greatest risk are ecosystems, low-lying coasts, water resources in some regions, tropical agriculture, and health in areas with low adaptive capacity
  • the regions at greatest risk are the Arctic, Africa, small islands and Asian and African mega-deltas. Within other regions (even regions with high incomes) some people, areas and activities can be particularly at risk
  • unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed and human systems to adapt
  • many impacts can be reduced, delayed or avoided by mitigation (net emission reductions). Mitigation efforts and investments over the next two to three decades will have a large impact on opportunities to achieve lower greenhouse gas stabilisation levels.

It is incredible that this information has been unreported and I would assume, largely ignored. Instead, we will continue to be inundated with claims that rabid claims that “climate change is a hoax, a left-wing conspiracy theory, or that any change stopped over a decade ago.”

It is an act of gross negligence that our media fails to accurately report the reality of climate change. It is also an act of gross negligence that our new government fails to embrace the challenges.

 

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What beat up?

Andrew Bolt is not happy.

Not only is social media attacking his pin-up boy, the newly elected Prime Minister (over a dozen justifiable issues) but there is now, in Andrew’s words:

… this beat up over Abbott’s expenses …

Andrew has mellowed. He never used to tolerate misuse of taxpayer’s money. Last year he asked Peter Slipper to justify the reason why he had billed the poor tax-payers for cab fares amounting to a few cents over $80. He aired this request publicly, devoting a whole article:

In February, I asked Peter Slipper to explain these taxi fares he charged to taxpayers.

And he also asked:

… where was Finance Minister Penny Wong in this, with so many people raising concerns over this spending of our money? What happened to the investigation by Special Minister of State Gary Gray? Who was minding the till?

Wow, I’m glad you’ve mellowed on matters pertaining to the public purse, Andrew. I’d hate to think how you’d attack Tony Abbott if you hadn’t.

 

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Do Speedos Count As The Emperor’s New Clothes?

A couple of days ago, Amanda Vanstone wrote this:

I am sickened by politicians who are prepared to jump on any tragedy, any person with a sad story, and use them politically. It is the politics of convenience at its worst. I am not sure why we do not see their activities as clearly and blatantly as we would if, for example, they conducted media interviews after the funerals of children stricken by disease.

But I don’t remember her saying much when this column appeared a couple of years ago:

“ONLY now are we finally meant to care that Labor’s slack border policies have killed more than 400 boat people.

Only this week does the Gillard Government finally admit that 4 per cent of the people lured into the boats do indeed drown at sea.

So who will resign over this lethal scandal?

Who will take responsibility? And why are the Greens so blind to all these corpses, bobbing in the sea?

True, the Government admitted this death toll very quietly, only in the privacy of its emergency caucus meeting on Monday, and only to scare Labor MPs into backing Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s troubled Malaysian solution.”

Andrew Bolt 14th September, 2011

Ok, so Bolt isn’t a politician. He’s a professional comedian. But I don’t remember her criticising Abbott for making this an issue:

“Abbott has been pursuing the “pink batts” issue for more than three years and made the pledge during a visit to an insulation factory in the prime minister’s Brisbane seat of Griffith on Friday.

“It’s important to get to the bottom of this for the families of the young men who died … and for all the people whose businesses have been damaged or destroyed, whose lives have been put on hold and who have lost their homes as a result of this,” Mr Abbott said.

“We’ve got to ensure that this kind of disaster never happens again.”

Four insulation workers died during the scheme’s rollout in Queensland and NSW.

It was put in place during Mr Rudd’s first term as prime minister, as a part of a national stimulus package to keep the economy ticking over.

But Mr Abbott argues the scheme is an indictment of Mr Rudd’s poor policy making and leadership.”

SBS 26th August, 2013

Ah, but I guess that’s different. Not sure why exactly, but I’m sure we’ll hear something like it’s ok, because Labor were DIRECTLY TO BLAME for those deaths, whereas the asylum seeker deaths were NOTHING TO DO with us. Mm, I seem to remember someone saying something about politician’s jumping on any tragedy..

By the way, anyone else notice both Abbott and Vanstone used the phrase, “sugar on the table” when refering to asylum seeker policy? Coincidence? It’s possible. I mean, today I read in a column by economist, Paul Kruger a reference to the Dunning Kruger effect, which by a strange coincidence, I’d considered using at the start of a blog yesterday, so I actual knew what it was before he explained it. Simply:

Dunning–Kruger effect

Dunning and Kruger proposed that, for a given skill, incompetent people will:

  1. tend to overestimate their own level of skill;
  2. fail to recognize genuine skill in others;
  3. fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy;
  4. recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill, if they are exposed to training for that skill.

Of course, my reference to the Dunning-Kruger Effect has nothing to with Amanda Vanstone’s column. If you see any relationship, it’s just another one of those coincidences. Like travel claims that take in marginal seats, or the stopover in Malaysia after Joyce’s India trip – lucky that the place he needed to go for a study tour was on the way back!

Perhaps, I should leave the last word to Sinead O’Connor

“Everyone can see what’s going on
They laugh `cause they know they’re untouchable
Not because what I said was wrong
Whatever it may bring
I will live by my own policies
I will sleep with a clear conscience
I will sleep in peace

Maybe it sounds mean
But I really don’t think so
You asked for the truth and I told you

Through their own words
They will be exposed
They’ve got a severe case of
The emperor’s new clothes”

The Emperor’s New Clothes Sinead O’Connor

 

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