Ryan Bridge: Aussie's economy is a warning of what's to come

The inflation thief might be gone but it lurks in the corner and if you’re not careful, it happily leaps out and steals your wages.

Last week we spoke about the fact their inflation’s running hot - almost 4%.

They’re now world leaders - highest rate in the developed world.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: The Bondi attack was a race relations problem

This business of Australia tightening up its gun laws feels like it runs the risk of distracting from the bigger problems over there.

I don’t think guns were the problem on Sunday. Australia already has some of the tightest gun laws in the world.

Rex Ahdar: A Judicial Slap and Tickle?

In a case that will not be forgotten quickly, if only for its bizarre name, the Federal Court of Australia on 23 August 2024 upheld a claim of discrimination by a transgender woman against a social network app catering solely for women and intended to be an “online refuge” and “safe space” for women. The transgender woman, Roxanne Tickle, after initially being accepted (by AI facial recognition software) onto the mobile phone app, was later taken off it by its CEO. The written judgment in Tickle v Giggle for Girls Pty Ltd (No 2), or Tickle v Giggle for short, is lengthy (86 pages and 283 paragraphs).

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: The Dave Pellowe Case - What Exactly Is It About?

I refused to do a Welcome to Country at my Christian conferences. Now I'm being taken to the Human Rights Commission.

A conservative Christian minister claims he is being persecuted for refusing to include a 'Welcome to Country' ceremony at the start of his religious conferences - and that he is prepared to go to jail to defend his rights.

Viv Forbes: Battery Baloney, Hydrogen Hype and Green Fairy Tales

How low Australia has fallen - our once-great BHP now has a “Vice President for Climate”, the number of Australian students choosing physics at high school is collapsing, and our government opposes nuclear energy while pretending we can build and operate nuclear submarines. 

Our Green politicians want: “No Coal, No Gas, No Nuclear” while Our ABC, Our CSIRO and Our Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) are telling us that wind and solar energy plus a bit of standby gas, plus heaps of batteries and new power lines can power our homes, industries AND the mass electrification of our vehicle fleet. This sounds like Australia’s very own great leap backwards? 

Heather du Plessis-Allan: We can't stop Australia deporting NZ-born criminals, but we can help them once they're here

The Australian change of heart on the 501s didn't last long did it, ay? 

They flipped their position today. They've issued a new directive. Now, what this is going to do essentially is it's going to force decision-makers when they’re considering whether to send a 501 back to New Zealand, or wherever else: they now have to put more emphasis on Australian safety when they make their decision. 

Viv Forbes: Net Zero Burial of Carbon Dioxide

The Queensland Government recently placed a ban on pumping and dumping carbon dioxide into the rocks of the Great Artesian Basin.

This was an event rarely seen – politicians have stumbled onto a sensible energy policy. Burying CO2 would achieve nothing useful – just more futile green waste.

But their ban on Carbon Capture and Underground Storage (CCUS) should be extended to all areas of Queensland, not just this one basin.

Roger Childs: Across the Tasman

We definitely need a fearless media

…. in the Reporters' Gallery yonder, there sat a Fourth Estate more important far than they all. Edmund Burke

One of the joys of visiting Australia is their free press and independent television channels. The Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age are good papers and in The Spectator they have a genuine main-stream media (MSM) right wing paper. Top New Zealand journalists - Amy Brooke and Karl du Fresne - periodically feature, telling the truth of what is really happening in the “Shaky Isles”. And NZCPR’s Muriel Newman features occasionally on Fox News providing accurate and balanced coverage on the New Zealand political scene.

Viv Forbes: Not Green at All

“Green” policies are destroying the natural environment and changing local weather. This is part of a futile UN scheme claiming to improve the climate of the world.

All green energy degrades its environment.

Take wind power.

Wind turbines steal energy from the atmosphere and must affect local weather. Turbines are always placed on the highest ground and along ridges to catch more wind. Natural hills already affect local weather by causing more rain along the ridge, and a rain shadow further downwind. Wind turbines enhance this rain shadow effect by robbing the wind of its ability to take moisture and rain into the drier interior. Promoting more inland desertification is not green.

Viv Forbes: Ruled by Fools

 

Australia has become a nation ruled by fools. 

We have surrendered power over every aspect of our lives and industry to fifteen debating chambers in eight ruling cities. These assemblies are controlled by lawyers, unionists, centralists, green dreamers, power seekers and tax consumers.

Their direct cost alone is horrendous. There are 837 politicians (ignoring local government). Each has a salary (say $200Kpy), travel and office costs (say $150Kpy), and staff costs (say $200Kpy) – a billion here, plus a billion there and pretty soon you’re talking real money.

Ross Meurant: War With China and Russia?

The trouble with Elections, is invariably they encourage utterances from some who want to be a political leader, to say pretty dumb things.

Boris Johnson and President Biden are classics- too many examples to bother reciting here but both, in my view, seek to deflect poor polling back home by promoting chaos in another country.

In the case of America, this model has also, long been adopted to ensure jobs back home within the Military Industrial Complex.

Australian Defence Minister Dutton’s recent, “Prepare for war with China and Russia”, also fits into this category – in my assessment.  Afterall, its looking to be a close election in Oz.

Perhaps if Aussie had paid more attention to Solomon Islands?  Too late now. 

Nick Cater: Tyranny of ineptitude

The exclusion of the unvaccinated from public places cannot be justified on public health grounds unless the object is deterrence through humiliation. 

If that was a rent-a-crowd demonstration in Melbourne on Saturday, you wouldn’t want to be picking up the tab. Attendance estimates are rubbery and memories are short but you would have to go back to February 1967 to find a middle-class revolt of similar size against an intransigent Victorian premier.

Daniel Andrews’ goose is not yet cooked, any more than Henry Bolte’s was when thousands protested outside Pentridge Prison against the hanging of Ronald Ryan. History records that Bolte picked up six more seats at the following election. Yet the protest should serve as a warning to Andrews that even patient, civilly obedient Victorians eventually reach breaking point.

The protests are not limited to Victoria or Australia. Huge demonstrations occurred last weekend in dozens of European cities including Belfast, Rotterdam and Milan. The biggest was in Vienna, which is about to enter another fruitless lockdown despite mount­ing evidence that lockdowns are a sadistic experiment with unintended consequences.

Viv Forbes: More Trees, Less Grass, No Food

Trying to bury carbon dioxide deep underground is another fashionable green fantasy. It consumes big dollars for taxpayer subsidies but coal and gas producers will love it as it wastes energy and will increase demand for reliable energy. Artificial carbon capture is an unnecessary waste - the grasslands, forests, crops and continental shelf of Australia sequester far more carbon dioxide than Australia emits from all energy, transport, agriculture and mining sources.

Australia has 440 million hectares of grasslands – that 4.4 M sq km is larger than Europe’s total area of 3.5 M sq km. We also have 147 million hectares of native forests, 1.8 million hectares of plantations and 4% of the world’s global forest estate. Australia has the world’s sixth largest forest area and the fourth-largest area of forest in nature conservation reserves. We are not short of trees.

Malcolm Roberts: Greens launch an attack - on trucks!

Malcolm Roberts, Senator for Queensland, discusses global warming scaremongering: Electric vehicles might be okay for suburb hopping in big cities, but I doubt there is a farm in Australia that would be able to run without any petrol or diesel. The Greens’ calls to ‘rapidly transition to electric vehicles‘ for their net zero economy by 2035 shows they have no clue of the energy requirements in transport, industry and agriculture.

Viv Forbes: Are We Indigenes Yet?

Reference: “Indigenous Voice to Parliament to include regional voices to address local issues”: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-25/voice-to-parliament-to-include-regional-voices/100020562

The UK has seen many waves of invaders and colonisers – Neanderthals, Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Danes, Norsemen, Normans and more recently Indians and Pakistanis. Only Irish, Welsh and Scottish inhabitants have had the strength to get special recognition today. All are treated as ordinary citizens.

No human race evolved in Australia so we are all colonists or invaders. Several races walked, paddled, sailed or flew here over the past 60,000 years. Some displaced earlier arrivals, others mixed with locals and some became extinct. Some left rock art distinctly different from that of later arrivals and some destroyed or hid evidence of earlier tribes. Some were cannibals, some brought domesticated animals with them and all hunted native animals, sometimes to extinction. None can claim moral superiority.

Viv Forbes: Real Meat is Green

Wandering recently through an arcade popular with the green smoothie set, I saw a sign boasting: “Plant Based Meat”.

Someone should advise those nutritional dunderheads that all real meat is plant-based. Real beef and lamb are built from live plants like grasses, lucerne and mulga, plus salt, minerals and clay; the best chicken is built mostly on seeds and shoots of wheat, corn and grasses plus a few worms, insects and gizzard-grit; and when I was a kid our bacon was built by porkers from pollard, whey and vegetable scraps.

Viv Forbes: Lock-ups and Shake-downs

Politicians have given Australia an impossible task - fight a Covid Lock-up while also enduring a Green Energy Shake-down.

A Covid Depression is already locked in. Recovery dictates that we must reverse the lockdown and also rid our weakened economy of the Green parasites forever sucking our energy.

Australia seems to specialize in political stupidity.

Victoria’s Scorched Earth policy has wrecked its economy. Despite this damage, they dream of replacing their nation-building brown coal electricity with unreliable wind and solar toys. Their once-free people cower in their homes while police and troops detain peaceful folk and demand papers. Covid will only decline when populations develop immunity. Lock-ups ensure that community immunity develops slowly.

Robert Carling: The economic tragedy of COVID-19

The Covid-19 virus (CV-19) is first and foremost a health crisis. But it is fast becoming an economic crisis as well. Some observers are asking whether the economic damage will be greater than the health damage. One commentator observed that “we are deliberately destroying our economy to slow the spread.” 

When the health damage could involve a large scale death toll, many people will rush to the judgement that any economic cost is a price worth paying — even if they think about it at all. That seems to be the consensus so far — but it may not stay that way as the potential enormity of the cost becomes more visible by the day and people accustomed to freedom bridle at draconian restrictions tying them to their homes and shutting down their businesses.

Viv Forbes: Aussie Bushfires Nurtured in National Parks

Listen carefully to a typical bush-fire warning: “A big fire in the XYZ National Park is now threatening adjacent homes and farms”. 

For decades now politicians have been recklessly locking up more land in National Parks, Reserves and Heritage Areas. There are now over 500 national parks covering over 11% of Australia.

In addition to this huge area of nationalised parks, the Howard government, in cahoots with compliant States, created untouchable Kyoto forests on private land in order to meet silly carbon dioxide obligations imposed by the Kyoto Protocol.

Viv Forbes: How to Create a Country with no Heart?

What happened to Australia’s once-bipartisan policies favouring decentralisation? Why is every proposal to develop an outback mine, dam, irrigation scheme or a real power station now labelled “controversial” by the ABC and opposed by the ALP/Greens?

This coastal-city focus and the hostility to new outback industry (except for wind/solar toys) has surely reached its zenith with the recent state budget for Queensland.

The population of coastal and metropolitan Queensland is surging with baby-boom retirees, welfare recipients, grey nomads, tourists, overseas students, migrants and winter refugees. But the outback is dying with lagging industry and many aging farmers retiring to the coast. We are creating a country with no heart.