Qld mayor condemns Welcome to Country:

“That Welcome to Country stuff is all pure bullshit.’’

Trevor Pickering, mayor of Croydon Shire Council in north Queensland, isn’t holding back on his views…

Poll:

Does Welcome to Country get overused?
Yes 98 %
No 2 %
20,366 votes

Vote here if you can climb the paywall

‘Diana Asmar’
That’s a name I’ve heard before

There were genuine athletes at the current Olympics of course.
How else would we have won so many medals.
—————–

Meet Jemima Montag – an Australian race-walker (two bronze medals) and the grandchild of Holocaust survivors. Jemima is a champion in her sport; she won the gold medal in back-to-back Commonwealth Games and competed in the 2020 Olympics.

But the piece of gold metal that matters most to her is not the one worn around her neck, but the one she wears on her wrist. Her gold bracelet came from her grandmother Judith, who survived the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau and a grueling death march in the freezing cold of winter.

Two years before she died, Judith cut a gold necklace of hers into three pieces, giving a piece to each of her three granddaughters.

Jemima wears that bracelet as a good luck charm during every race. It reminds her of her grandmother, whose incredible strength and resilience inspire her with each and every step.

Contributor: Jill Goltzer

Here is a king worthy of the title.

And here is a picture of him, he is about 40 years old.

COMMENTARY
GREG SHERIDAN
Crisis of state authority, identity politics at heart of UK riots

The ugly, indeed despicable, violent riots in Britain over recent weeks tell us a few things, but not mainly what most analysts are saying. For a start, we shouldn’t let street thugs of any kind determine a political agenda.

The key lesson from these riots is that the effectiveness and authority of government in Britain is in decline.

It’s well to remember that street riots in Britain predate, by centuries, whatever social conditions apply today. Historically, riots were one of the ways, before parliamentary politics, that populations registered discontent.

There’s a long tradition of street violence in Britain, on the left and the right, over class, regional hostilities, unpopular government decisions, sometimes over race, often historically over religion.

The British, like most peoples, are a paradox. Famed for orderly queues, possessors of an intricate, nuanced, finely gauged code of politeness that can carry great charm, their young men also exhibit a tendency to periodically erupt into violence. Have you been on a train with Millwall football supporters lately?

It is the case that a huge number of Brits are unhappy with the size and composition of immigration. They’re right to be dissatisfied. Since David Cameron became prime minister in 2010, British governments have promised to reduce the immigration intake from several hundred thousand a year to less than 100,000. Yet they’ve never done so, or even come close.

This is, oddly enough, a particular failure by every Conservative prime minister from Cameron to Rishi Sunak. Generally, Britain is a successful immigrant country. The cohort who have had most trouble settling in to British society are a minority of Muslim immigrants. Most Muslim immigrants have been successful enough in settling in to Britain. But a small minority hate their new homeland.

However, let’s not unfairly single out Muslims. A significant section of the British cultural, educational, academic, media and political elite also hate Britain, seeing its history as unrelieved racism, sexism and violence, and its present social model as hetero-normative oppression and economic exploitation.

This view is absolutely barking mad, of course, given that Britain has created one of the most prosperous and equal societies on earth and pioneered ethical thinking and much cultural achievement.

But the salient point is the decade and a half failure of Conservative governments to carry out their own policies. It’s not remotely anti-immigrant in the general sense to regard a particular size and composition of intake as excessive. The British government couldn’t control its immigration intake while it was a member of the EU. That’s why millions of Brits voted for Brexit.

But even after Britain left the EU, governments couldn’t implement their own policies.

There are all kinds of bureaucratic and judicial reasons for this, but really they amount to a failure of will. That is the crisis of modern Britain.

I recently read a treatment of Margaret Thatcher’s time in office that convincingly drew the contrast with her. Thatcher’s greatest contribution to Britain was not to check the size of government, cut taxes, deregulate and let the magic of the market revitalise the British economy. She did do all that, and it was hugely important.

But her key contribution was to restore the authority and effectiveness of government.

Britain in the 1970s was crippled by strikes and social protest that ignored the rule of law. Outlaw unions could stop you going to work if they had a dispute with you or your boss. They could shut down any business in the country, and destroy any individual’s right to earn a living, without regard to the law. The law didn’t apply to them.

Thatcher’s genius was her courage. She told the police to enforce the law, which meant enforcing the democratic and legal right for businesses and employees to operate regardless of union diktats. It is not too much to say that Thatcher restored the rule of law in Britain. It then settled back into the mainly peaceful and cooperative society it is when its institutions work.

Mob rule, whether of the left or the right, is a form of tribal identity politics. Like all identity politics, it’s based on a doctrine that is passionately held on the left. That doctrine is that parliamentary democracy is a sham and its institutions don’t apply to selected political forces or demographic groups.

Australia dodged what would have been a fatal institutionalising of identity politics in the voice referendum. Australians didn’t reject Aboriginal people in this vote. Australians of all backgrounds rejected the idea that democratic institutions don’t work for, or shouldn’t apply to, any subset of society.

We all have our problems. They all have to be adjudicated in democratic and legal ways.

Nothing justifies these riots. However, the idea of “two-tier” policing is undeniable, but not the fault of police. Black Lives Matter demonstrations were violent, destructive of property and injurious to individuals in the US and Britain. Yet Keir Starmer famously took the knee to show his support for them. In America, Kamala Harris praised the demonstrations and raised bail money to get violent protesters out of jail.

Needless to say, the chief victims of this protest violence were low-income people who lived in areas that the demonstrations made, for a time, lawless.

Because Black Lives Matter protests were seen as expressions of virtuous identity politics, they got soft treatment by state institutions that should have been blind to politics.

This is part of the utter poison of identity politics. It’s wholly destructive and the crazy ideas in our government’s latest multicultural report would be disastrous if implemented. Identity politics tells minorities there is nothing but hostility and suspicion in their host societies. Whereas nations such as the US, Britain and Australia, while a million miles from perfect, are characterised by opportunity.

Minority identity politics also has this gruesome and inevitable consequence. It produces white identity politics among white folks who don’t feel particularly privileged. British author Douglas Murray points out that riots in 2011 were especially aggressive in Sutherland, Rotherham and Hartlepool. The proportion of people in those three towns receiving out-of-work benefits in 2011 was, respectively, 18 per cent, 16 per cent and 21 per cent. Today, each of those towns actually has worse rates. Today’s figures are, respectively, 19 per cent, 18 per cent and 23 per cent.

Thirteen years later, the underlying social problems have got worse – greater marital breakdown, greater absence of fathers, even more useless education that doesn’t equip people for jobs, consequent lack of economic opportunity.

For the past decade and a half British government has been unable to do anything. When it tries to do something even quite simple, such as cutting the immigration rate, and runs into problems, it doesn’t prevail. It gives up rather than cause a split in the party. Thatcher understood, among many other things, that in a civilised society the police must have the monopoly on the use of force. Because without authority there is no freedom.

Oz

I just read Greg Sheridan’s article posted above. Some pretty powerful stuff but most of all this, “Australia dodged what would have been a fatal institutionalising of identity politics in the voice referendum. Australians didn’t reject Aboriginal people in this vote. Australians of all backgrounds rejected the idea that democratic institutions don’t work for, or shouldn’t apply to, any subset of society.” Well said Mr Sheridan.

“The legacy media is so focused on rebranding Kamala Harris and running interference for Tim Walz that they cannot even recognize the brilliance of this pivot. X is the one platform that isn’t working overtime to either ignore, misrepresent, or drown out Trump’s campaign and message. Much to their chagrin, with this X interview, Trump has blown a hole through their propaganda wall and reached past to voters that they had no idea existed. “

The above is the end paragraph of an excellent piece from Red State. The Legacy media has no idea of the rich vein of voters Trump is able to tap into since his homecoming on X.

https://redstate.com/jenniferoo/2024/08/12/trump-on-x-taps-into-a-voting-bloc-that-legacy-media-doesnt-even-know-exists-n2178040

I’ll have to go & sell a whole stack of beer tomorrow

But, but, mate…beers are about $12 in a pub now…tell you what, you give me three, and I’ll give you a book, with some very personal remarks in the front just for you…

Janet’s piece today in the Australian gives it to the enablers of Ms Knickerless with her usual style, elegance and logic:

Why can’t Brittany Higgins just say sorry?

Janet Albrechtsen

32 minutes ago

One of the lingering conundrums at the centre of the Brittany Higgins saga is that those who most publicly have professed support for the young woman have offered, on any objective reading, the wrong kind of support. And those who have been accused very publicly of not offering Higgins support in fact offered the right kind – but quietly.

As Justice Michael Lee said last year when rejecting as false Higgins’s claim that Linda Reynolds and Fiona Brown tried to cover up an alleged rape, this was “the only alleged cover-up of which I am aware where those said to be responsible for the covering up were almost insisting the complainant go to the police”.

Most of Higgins’s high-profile “supporters” are better described as enablers. They bear a great deal of responsibility for how long and how badly this saga has turned out for her.

In keeping with this inverted moral universe, writer Julia Baird thinks Higgins should not be held to account for damage she may have done to others when she made untrue claims of a political cover-up more than two years after the alleged rape.

Last weekend, under the headline “What I wish Linda Reynolds would say, instead of suing Brittany Higgins”, Baird wrote this in Nine papers: “Why would Reynolds not say: ‘Look, I think, and Justice Lee found, that Brittany Higgins and The Project promoted regretful, baseless claims of a political conspiracy that I was falsely alleged to be part of. This has been damaging to my health and reputation. But I accept that a great wrong was found to have occurred to a young woman in my employ and I will avoid further litigation in the hope she can put this awful episode behind her. I wish her well.”

Baird’s feelings for Higgins are clear enough. Her logic is harder to locate. Does Baird mean that if a woman is found, on the balance of probabilities, to have been raped in 2019, the woman will get a leave pass more than two years later for making false allegations against other people, allegations that damage their physical and mental health, their careers and reputations, their lives?

Justice Lee found that Higgins’s claims of a political cover-up were false. He found that claims that Reynolds and Brown “were active participants in a systemic cover-up of alleged criminal conduct” lacked “any solid, verifiable material” in support.

The Federal Court judge drew a sharp distinction between the character of Higgins’s evidence in 2019 with the character of her claims in 2021. He acknowledged that “any inconsistent or untrue representations in 2019 are not inconsistent with the conduct of a genuine victim of sexual assault struggling to process what happened, seeking to cope, and working through her options”.

Equally important with his findings about rape trauma, the judge definitively rejected rape trauma as an explanation or excuse for Higgins’s untrue statements made some two years later when she alleged that Reynolds and Brown had treated her badly as part of her larger story of a political cover-up.

Setting aside minor inaccuracies, and without being exhaustive, the judge listed nine falsehoods at the centre of Higgins’s political cover-up allegations.

Yet, like Baird last weekend, fellow writer Margaret Simons suggested soon after Lee’s judgment that someone raped in 2019 should have some kind of general exemption from sanctions for actions in 2021 and 2022. Even after Lee found Higgins had made nine false statements in her claim against the commonwealth, Simons suggested it would be terrible for the National Anti-Corruption Commission to investigate a payment by the commonwealth to “a victim of a traumatising crime” by way of “compensation”.

Simons’s proposition was absurd. Compensation was not paid to Higgins for a rape. Money was paid for her claims that she was treated badly by senior ministers and by Brown. Lee found that Higgins made untrue statement in her claim.

Baird’s suggestion that Reynolds spare Higgins by walking away from the defamation claim under way in the West Australian Supreme Court is equally absurd. The double standards from the host of a podcast called Not Stupid are, well, stupid. Baird treats Reynolds as collateral damage, as a woman whose claims apparently need not be taken too seriously because she was Higgins’s older boss.

Baird failed to address the reasons Reynolds is now in court. The WA senator has never had the chance to fully defend herself in court against Higgins’s false allegations of a political cover-up. Not in the criminal trial in October 2022, nor when the commonwealth decided to pay Higgins $2.4m in December 2022 as compensation for claims that she was mistreated by Reynolds and others. Not during the Sofronoff inquiry in July last year as it concerned the criminal trial.

And not during Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation trial in December last year against Ten and Lisa Wilkinson.

Put simply, Reynolds is in court right now because Higgins refused to apologise for social media posts that Reynolds says form a long and well-orchestrated plan by Higgins and David Sharaz to damage Reynolds with false allegations of a political cover-up.

There is one sound reason Reynolds might have chosen not to sue Higgins – though Baird didn’t mention this. Reynolds may lose. Notwithstanding Lee’s findings, it is entirely possible that Justice Paul Tottle finds, for any number of reasons, against Reynolds. That is a different matter entirely from Baird’s absurd suggestion that Higgins should not have to account for her behaviour more than two years later.

A small measure of reason might prevail among some of Higgins’s supporters if one proposes the same scenario – with no names. Or is Baird’s suggested leave pass suitable only for a woman named Brittany Higgins? Is there an expiry date on this leave pass?

The most logical way this ghastly saga could have ended long ago is the same one Higgins’s enablers will not countenance. I wish Higgins could have said sorry. Sorry to Reynolds and so sorry to Brown for making allegations against them that Lee found to be false.

Alas, sorry is the hardest word for Higgins. Admitting to the false claims with an apology would surely mean the Albanese government would have to revisit its $2.4m payment to Higgins. It would ensnare senior ministers Katy Gallagher and Penny Wong who, like Wilkinson, were willing to destroy Reynolds and Brown over a claim that lacked any solid, verifiable evidence.

And Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus’s efforts to ensure that Higgins’s claims were not tested should attract fierce scrutiny from, at minimum, the National Audit Office but more appropriately by the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

This dilemma may have more tragic consequences for Higgins than financial ones. Even if Justice Tottle finds against Reynolds, short of him finding there was indeed a political cover-up, Higgins risks being defined forever by her untrue claims of a political cover-up in Parliament House.