Cartoons of the Week

First Dog on the Moon

Alan Moir

The awful truth that over 8 million* Australians refuse to face

The Monthly, August 2019:

In June, I delivered a keynote presentation on Australia’s vulnerability to climate change and our policy challenges at the annual meeting of the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, the main conference for those working in the climate science community. I saw it as an opportunity to summarise the post-election political and scientific reality we now face.

As one of the dozen or so Australian lead authors on the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) sixth assessment report, currently underway, I have a deep appreciation of the speed and severity of climate change unfolding across the planet. Last year I was also appointed as one of the scientific advisers to the Climate Council, Australia’s leading independent body providing expert advice to the public on climate science and policy. In short, I am in the confronting position of being one of the few Australians who sees the terrifying reality of the climate crisis.

Preparing for this talk I experienced something gut-wrenching. It was the realisation that there is now nowhere to hide from the terrible truth…...

The results coming out of the climate science community at the moment are, even for experts, similarly alarming.

One common metric used to investigate the effects of global warming is known as “equilibrium climate sensitivity”, defined as the full amount of global surface warming that will eventually occur in response to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentrations compared to pre-industrial times. It’s sometimes referred to as the holy grail of climate science because it helps quantify the specific risks posed to human society as the planet continues to warm.

We know that CO2 concentrations have risen from pre-industrial levels of 280 parts per million (ppm) to approximately 410 ppm today, the highest recorded in at least three million years. Without major mitigation efforts, we are likely to reach 560 ppm by around 2060.

When the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2013, it estimated that such a doubling of CO2 was likely to produce warming within the range of 1.5 to 4.5°C as the Earth reaches a new equilibrium. However, preliminary estimates calculated from the latest global climate models (being used in the current IPCC assessment, due out in 2021) are far higher than with the previous generation of models. Early reports are predicting that a doubling of CO2 may in fact produce between 2.8 and 5.8°C of warming. Incredibly, at least eight of the latest models produced by leading research centres in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and France are showing climate sensitivity of 5°C or warmer.

When these results were first released at a climate modelling workshop in March this year, a flurry of panicked emails from my IPCC colleagues flooded my inbox. What if the models are right? Has the Earth already crossed some kind of tipping point? Are we experiencing abrupt climate change right now?

The model runs aren’t all available yet, but when many of the most advanced models in the world are independently reproducing the same disturbing results, it’s hard not to worry.
When the UN’s Paris Agreement was adopted in December 2015, it defined a specific goal: to keep global warming to well below 2°C and as close as possible to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (defined as the climate conditions experienced during the 1850–1900 period). While admirable in intent, the agreement did not impose legally binding limits on signatory nations and contained no enforcement mechanisms. Instead, each country committed to publicly disclosed Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to reduce emissions. In essence, it is up to each nation to act in the public interest.

Even achieving the most ambitious goal of 1.5°C will see the further destruction of between 70 and 90 per cent of reef-building corals compared to today, according to the IPCC’s “Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C”, released last October. With 2°C of warming, a staggering 99 per cent of tropical coral reefs disappear. An entire component of the Earth’s biosphere – our planetary life support system – would be eliminated. The knock-on effects on the 25 per cent of all marine life that depends on coral reefs would be profound and immeasurable.

So how is the Paris Agreement actually panning out?

In 2017, we reached 1°C of warming above global pre-industrial conditions. According to the UN Environment Programme’s “Emissions Gap Report”, released in November 2018, current unconditional NDCs will see global average temperature rise by 2.9 to 3.4°C above pre-industrial levels by the end of this century.

To restrict warming to 2°C above pre-industrial levels, the world needs to triple its current emission reduction pledges. If that’s not bad enough, to restrict global warming to 1.5°C, global ambition needs to increase fivefold.

Meanwhile, the Australian federal government has a target of reducing emissions by 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030, which experts believe is more aligned with global warming of 3 to 4°C. Despite Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s claim that we will meet our Paris Agreement commitments “in a canter”, the UNEP report clearly identifies Australia as one of the G20 nations that will fall short of achieving its already inadequate NDCs by 2030.

Even with the 1°C of warming we’ve already experienced, 50 per cent of the Great Barrier Reef is dead. We are witnessing catastrophic ecosystem collapse of the largest living organism on the planet. As I share this horrifying information with audiences around the country, I often pause to allow people to try and really take that information in.

Increasingly after my speaking events, I catch myself unexpectedly weeping in my hotel room or on flights home. Every now and then, the reality of what the science is saying manages to thaw the emotionally frozen part of myself I need to maintain to do my job. In those moments, what surfaces is pure grief. It’s the only feeling that comes close to the pain I felt processing the severity of my dad’s brain injury. Being willing to acknowledge the arrival of the point of no return is an act of bravery.

But these days my grief is rapidly being superseded by rage. Volcanically explosive rage. Because in the very same IPCC report that outlines the details of the impending apocalypse, the climate science community clearly stated that limiting warming to 1.5°C is geophysically possible.

Past emissions alone are unlikely to raise global average temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC report states that any further warming beyond the 1°C already recorded would likely be less than 0.5°C over the next 20 to 30 years, if all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions were reduced to zero immediately. That is, if we act urgently, it is technically feasible to turn things around. The only thing missing is strong global policy.
Although the very foundation of human civilisation is at stake, the world is on track to seriously overshoot our UN targets. Worse still, global carbon emissions are still rising. In response, scientists are prioritising research on how the planet has responded during other warm periods in the Earth’s history.

The most comprehensive summary of conditions experienced during past warm periods in the Earth’s recent history was published in June 2018 in one of our leading journals, Nature Geoscience, by 59 leading experts from 17 countries. The report concluded that warming of between 1.5 and 2°C in the past was enough to see significant shifts in climate zones, and land and aquatic ecosystems “spatially reorganize”.

These changes triggered substantial long-term melting of ice in Greenland and Antarctica, unleashing 6 to 13 metres of global sea-level rise lasting thousands of years.

Examining the Earth’s climatic past tells us that even between 1.5 and 2°C of warming sees the world reconfigure in ways that people don’t yet appreciate. All bets are off between 3 and 4°C, where we are currently headed. Parts of Australia will become uninhabitable, as other areas of our country become increasingly ravaged by extreme weather events.

This year the Australian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society’s annual conference was held in Darwin, where the infamous Cyclone Tracy struck on Christmas Day in 1974, virtually demolishing the entire city. More than 70 per cent of the city’s buildings, including 80 per cent of its houses, were destroyed. Seventy-one people were killed and most of the 48,000 residents made homeless. Conditions were so dire that around 36,000 people were evacuated, many by military aircraft. It was a disaster of monumental proportions.

As I collated this information for my presentation, it became clear to me that Cyclone Tracy is a warning. Without major action, we will see tropical cyclones drifting into areas on the southern edge of current cyclone zones, into places such as south-east Queensland and northern New South Wales, where infrastructure is not ready to cope with cyclonic conditions.

These areas currently house more than 3.6 million people; we simply aren’t prepared for what is upon us.....

Notes:

* the over "8 million Australians" are the 8,018,310 voters who did not give their first preference vote at the May 2019 federal election to a political party with a solid climate change policy.

Australian Politics in 2019: the betrayal

Echo NetDaily, 15 July 2019:

Thus Spake Mungo: The betrayal

Scott Morrison really likes quiet Australians – as quiet as possible. So it was really no surprise that his response to his minister, Ken Wyatt’s modest and tentative proposal to consider reviving an Indigenous Voice through the Uluru Statement from the Heart was simple and direct: bloody well shut up and do what you are told.

We will decide who speaks for Indigenous Australia and the circumstances in which they speak, and by we, I mean me, and Eric Abetz and Peter Dutton and the Institute of Public Affairs and Andrew Bolt – not Indigenous Australians. They can do what they are told.

So the glimmer of hope last week was extinguished as soon as it began. Wyatt knew it probably would be – when he delicately referred to ‘reticence’ within his party room, he was prepared for a backlash, but maybe not one as cynical, hypocritical and downright vicious as the one that transpired.

In nanoseconds the same old lies were trotted out, most outrageously the one about the Voice being a third chamber of parliament. If the deliberately ignorant ever thought that was the case, they have certainly been informed by now that it never was and never is – the proposal is for a Voice, an advisory body with no power to legislate or veto whatever the parliament decides.

This must have been clear even to Dutton. But this did not stop him repeating the fabrication on national television. What he actually means, of course, is that the truth is irrelevant – what matters is that it can be turned into a massive scare campaign to deceive the gullible in much the same way the coalition devised the invention of Labor’s death taxes, which worked on May 18.

And if that involves rejecting, traducing and misrepresenting the long and tortuous process that led to Uluru, well they can just suck it up. Everyone knows there are no votes in Aborigines.

So Wyatt meekly surrendered to the inevitable and will now go back to what he called pragmatism, negotiation, compromise – we must have consensus before we even think about going to a referendum, otherwise there is a risk of it failing.

And indeed there is, but only because of the intransigence of the reactionary rump that now holds sway over his government. The deep strain of latent racism that prevails throughout the joint party room and its acolytes is not confined to the fringes of the National Party – it has infected Liberals as well, some of whom call themselves the protectors of mainstream Australia.

They are worried about what they regard as causing divisions – offering rights and privileges to one group to disadvantage the rest. This is precisely what they demand for the religious zealots, but no matter. As they well know, there are no votes in Aborigines. And there is a sneaking suspicion that their predicament, while deplorable, is somehow their own fault – if they could just forget the past and get on with it, the incarcerations, the mortality rates, the unemployment, the homeless, the poverty and despair would simply disappear.

So we have the always predictable Craig Kelly say he did not want to spend money on a referendum – he would rather spend it on closing the gap (actually he would rather spend it on a coal fired power station, but let that pass). Barnaby Joyce says the solution is to break up the senate to bring in more rural members. Amanda Stoker, apparently attempting to remake herself into a transgender Peter Dutton, is against anything even vaguely progressive on principle.

And she is not the only one – come in Morgan Begg, of IPA, which by no coincidence is secretly funded by a large chunk of the mining industry, a traditional enemy of Indigenous rights. Begg sprang into the pages of The Australian (where else?) to claim that a Voice would violate all principles of racial equality. And he went back to the hugely successful 1967 referendum to boost his thesis: by agreeing to count Aborigines in the national census, Australians voted to remove race from the constitution.

But that was only part of that they voted for. They also voted to give the Commonwealth Parliament the right – even the duty – to legislate specifically for Aborigines, a considerably more substantial outcome. This was the power John Howard used in 2006 to bring in his military intervention of allegations of child abuse. There is no record of Begg inveighing against such blatant racism division, illiberalism.

And his hypocrisy is echoed by many conservatives, including Morrison, who is determined to avoid embedding any suggestion of a Voice in the constitution – the key, the non-negotiable plank in the Uluru Statement. Morrison says that if there is to be a Voice – and mind you, he is not saying there will be – an advisory body established by parliament will be quite sufficient.

But this misses the point: not only would such a body be vulnerable to political interference, in the same way Howard abolished the former Australian and Torres Strait Islander Commission in 2004, but the whole idea is that the Voice should be endorsed by the Australian people, not just by the politicians of the time.

This after all, was the argument of the conservatives over same sex marriage – the change was so important it had to go to a plebiscite. But obviously reconciliation with Indigenous Australians can be regarded as relatively trivial – there are no votes in Aborigines.

In the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a referendum

In the end, Morrison and Wyatt will probably be able to cobble together some anodyne words, some impotent tokenism he can take to a referendum which may or may not pass, and who cares anyway. But it will be a travesty of Uluru, a betrayal of the painstaking months of good faith the delegates invested in the hope that this time, at last, someone would listen.

Wyatt has been lauded as the first of his race to join cabinet as the first Minister for Indigenous Australia – Morgan Begg and Andrew Bolt would no doubt call this divisive in itself. But the task was too much for him or probably anyone else. Ken Wyatt could have been a hero – not only an Indigenous hero, but a hero for all Australians of goodwill, the majority who are willing to support the long march to real reconciliation. Instead, he has become just another casualty, yet another victim of the casual racism and cruelty of the right wing rump……

Read the full article here.

David Leyonhjelm out of a job and on his way to court

After prematurely claiming victory before the full Legislative Council ballot count was completed, only to find himself among the losers at the recent NSW election, former federal senator David Leyonhjelm now has to face court on 29 April 2019......

ABC News, 17 April 2019:

Senator Hanson-Young is suing Mr Leyonhjelm for defamation, claiming her character had been attacked through statements that she was a misandrist and a hypocrite in television and radio interviews last year.

The former Liberal Democrat senator, who recently failed in his election bid for the NSW Upper House, has denied he defamed the Greens politician.

Today, the Federal Court heard Senator Keneally was among 10 witnesses who were expected to provide evidence to the trial.

Senators Derryn Hinch and Stirling Griff are expected to be called to give evidence, while Senator Hanson-Young and Mr Leyonhjelm will also testify.

Sue Chrysanthou, the lawyer for Senator Hanson-Young, said several senators would be expected to undergo a short cross-examination at court.

She requested the witnesses be allowed to appear via video link due to the "exorbitant" cost of flying them to Sydney.

However, Justice Richard White was reluctant to agree, and said the witnesses were available and had been given plenty of notice.

He told the court he had warned the parties that the timing was likely to coincide with an election.

Ms Chrystanthou and Mr Leyonhjelm's lawyer, Kurt Stoyle, both confirmed that attempts to find a resolution through mediation had failed.

'This is something I feel very strongly about'

Senator Hanson-Young is seeking re-election while Mr Leyonhjelm has conceded his "life as a politician is over" following the NSW state poll.

In a blog post published earlier this week, Mr Leyonhjelm was particularly critical of the Liberal Democrats, which he led for more than a decade.

"While this is not a personal tragedy for me [I was always a fairly reluctant politician], it is concerning for the Liberal Democratic Party," he wrote.

"I wish I could say the party is in good hands, but I fear that is not the case.

"The National Executive does not inspire confidence."

While North Coast Voices was on its annual break….

On Christmas Eve the Morrison Government released the following:

By the time a reader clicks on this link, http://epbcnotices.environment.gov.au/publicnoticesreferrals/,

there will only be 8-9 days left to submit comments.

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In what they are now trying to pass off as an attempt at humour the Liberal National Party of Australia posted this petty, divisive Christmas meme on their Facebook page.

LNP’s removal of this meme did little to stop the negative response on social media.

Tone deaf and abysmally stupid was the general consensus.

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The Guardian, 26 December 2018:

A man has been shot by police in New South Wales after he allegedly lunged at officers with a knife, and has been taken to hospital in a critical condition.

Police were called to a home in Waterview Heights, west of Grafton, in the early hours of Wednesday morning following concern for the 36-year-old’s welfare.

Police said he lunged at officers with the knife upon their arrival.

The man was flown to Gold Coast University hospital in a critical condition.

A critical incident team will investigate the circumstances of the incident.

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Stock market volatility continued over the Christmas break as President Donald Trump tweets further personal attacks on the US Federal Reserve and its personnel. Mr Trump's latest attack heightened fears about the economy being destabilised by a man who wants control over the Fed.

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Another young child died whilst being held in custody of US Customs and Border Protection. Eight year-old Felix Alonzo-Gomez died on December 25th after a medical diagnosis of “common cold” proved inaccurate. The boy's death follows that of  7 year old Jakelin Caal Maquin, 7, also of Guatemala, who died in Border patrol custody earlier this month. 

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SBS News, 26 December 2018:

The Coalition could be at risk of losing 24 seats at the next federal election, including those of six frontbenchers, according to a Newspoll quarterly analysis. The analysis, published in The Australian, reveals the government has failed to claw back electoral ground from Labor in both regional and metropolitan seats. While Prime Minister Scott Morrison remains ahead of Bill Shorten as preferred leader, his satisfaction ratings have dropped into the negatives.

According to this Newspoll survey analysis covering 25 October to 9 December 2018, 45% of voters over 50 years of age dissatisfied with Australian Prime Minster Scott Morrison’s performance.

On a two-party preferred basis, polling stands at Labor 53 and Lib-Nats Coalition 47.

Rumours of an early March election, to be called just after Australia Day, persist according to The Guardian.

@nobby15

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@Quad_Finn, 27 December 2018:

Japan has announced its first commercial whale hunt since leaving the IWC. The hunt will take place in July 2019 and will target Endangered Sei whales along with Minke whales & Bryde’s whales. It is not known how many whales of each species Japan intends to kill each season. 

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On Thursday 27 December 2018 Marble Bar in the Pilbarra, Western Australia experienced it's hottest day on record reaching 49.3C at 3.40pm.

           

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The Daily Examiner, 28 December 2018, p.1:

The $300,000 fine issued to Clarence Valley Council by the NSW Land and Environment Court last week for the destruction of a rare Aboriginal object in Grafton will be reinvested into the area, rather than go back into State Government revenue coffers.

The court’s ruling handed down on December 21 included a series of detailed orders as part of the penalty that includes several Clarence-based directives that were reached after consultation with the Local Aboriginal Lands Councils and community members.

It is believed this case is the first of its kind to be ordered with this directive.

The council was prosecuted for the unlawful maiming and removal of a red/black bean scar tree that occurred in 2013 and 2016. The tree, which stood on the corner of Breimba and Dovedale streets in Grafton and was a surviving original specimen from the flood plain before white settlement, was a registered culturally modified object under the Aboriginal Site Register.

The council will pay the fine amount of $300,000 to the Grafton Ngerrie Local Aboriginal Land Council which will be applied to remediation actions.

These include a feasibility study to establish a Keeping Place in the Grafton area for Aboriginal cultural heritage items including long-term storage for the scar tree remnants.

It will also provide research funding into local Aboriginal cultural heritage for educational purposes including training of council field staff and senior management.

The money will also be used to establish a permanent exhibition and fund a series of one-day Clarence Valley Healing Festivals to be held in various Clarence Valley Aboriginal communities throughout 2019 and 2020.

The council was also ordered to, at its own expense, publish a notice in several newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald, Koori Mail and The Daily Examiner and on the council’s website and Facebook pages.

Additional costs include a $48,000 legal bill which will bring the total costs to the council to more than $350,000.

The council was convicted of the offence against s 86(1) of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 of harming an object that it knew was an Aboriginal object.

The original fine was $400,000 but an early plea of guilty made council eligible for a 25 per cent discount on the penalty. The council potentially faced a penalty of up to $1.1million for its actions.

Council general manager Ashley Lindsay said the council agreed it had done the wrong thing by removing the scar tree and accepted the court’s decision.

“As the mayor and I have said previously, we acknowledge the importance of the scar tree to our Aboriginal community and are deeply sorry for the hurt and sense of loss the removal of the tree has caused,” Mr Lindsay said.

“The tree’s destruction does not represent who we are or who we strive to be as an organisation.

“This council values its connections with the Aboriginal community and I genuinely believe we generally work well together.

“But on this occasion we did the wrong thing and for that we apologise.”

BACKGROUND

Chief Executive, Office of Environment and Heritage v  Clarence Valley Council  [2018] NSWLEC 205 (21 December 2018), excerpt:

A scar tree is harmed

1. Until May 2016, a culturally modified tree stood in Grafton, on the corner of Breimba and Dovedale Streets. The tree was either a Red Bean or Black Bean tree. It had a bifurcated trunk with scarring on two parts of it. The larger scar faced a south westerly direction and was approximately 1.4m tall and 40cm wide. The smaller scar faced a westerly direction and was higher up the trunk.

2. Various reasons for the scarring have been passed down by the knowledge holders to local Aboriginal people. Aboriginal elders have said that the scar tree is culturally significant to the local Gumbaynggirr people and that the scarring was made using a stone axe either as a directional marker directing visitors to nearby Fisher Park, or for ceremonial purposes in connection with other sites in the area, or by someone wanting to make a shield.

3. In 1995, the scar tree was registered as a culturally modified tree on the Aboriginal Site Register. In 2005, the information about the scar tree was transferred from the Aboriginal Site Register to the Aboriginal Heritage Information Management System (“AHIMS”) maintained by the Office of Environment and Heritage (“OEH”). The scar tree was thereby identified as an Aboriginal object for the purposes of the National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974 (“NPW Act”). Under s 86(1) of the NPW Act, it is an offence for a person to harm or desecrate an object that the person knows is an Aboriginal object.

4. The local government authority for Grafton and the Clarence Valley,  Clarence Valley Council  (“the Council”), lopped the crown of the scar tree in July 2013. The Council was issued with and paid a penalty notice for harming an Aboriginal object, in breach of s 86(2) of the NPW Act.

5. The lopping of the scar tree exacerbated the decline in the health of the tree. In 2015, the Council included the scar tree on the Council’s annual stump grinding list for removal of the tree. On 19 May 2016, the Council completely removed the scar tree. The scar tree was cut into four pieces, including a cut through the lower scar. Remnants of the scar tree were taken to the Council’s nursery in Grafton. On 20 May 2016, the Council realised what it had done and self-reported to the OEH that, in completely removing the scar tree, it had harmed an Aboriginal object in breach of s 86(1) of NPW Act.

6. On 27 May 2016, the OEH after an investigation of the offence, seized the remnants of the scar tree pursuant to s 156B(4) of the NPW Act. On 9 June 2016, the remnants of the scar tree were relocated to the National Parks and Wildlife Service’s premises at South Grafton, where they remain today.

Full judgment is here.

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Perth Now, 30 December 2018:

Four months after losing the leadership spill he instigated, Peter Dutton has broken his silence in an extraordinary spray at Malcolm Turnbull.

Calling the deposed prime minister spiteful and indecisive, the Home Affairs Minister told Brisbane's The Sunday Mail that Mr Turnbull had brought about his own downfall through his lack of political nous.

"Malcolm had a plan to become Prime Minister but no plan to be Prime Minister," was Mr Dutton's damning evaluation.

He also criticised the former leader for actions he saw as undermining the Morrison government.

"I am the first to defend the legacy of the Turnbull government. Malcolm was strong on economic management, borders and national security, but Malcolm will trash his own legacy if he believes his position is strengthened by seeing us lose under Scott (Morrison),'' Mr Dutton said.

He excoriated Mr Turnbull for not supporting the Liberal Party's candidate in his old seat of Wentworth.

"Walking away from (his seat of) Wentworth and not working to have (Liberal Wentworth candidate) Dave Sharma elected was worse than any behaviour we saw even under (former Labor prime minister Kevin) Rudd."

Stating emphatically that he wasn't a stalking horse for former leader Tony Abbott or a right wing "Bible basher", Mr Dutton said Mr Turnbull's poor management had lost the Libs 15 seats in the 2016 election, leaving the government "with a one-seat majority which just made the parliament unmanageable. We were paralysed.".....

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Unanswered questions at the start of 2019. 

The last federal general election was on 2 July 2016. A year later and the Federal Liberal Party was still $3,711,956 in debt. 

Has the party managed to pay down this debt and how much money have they received as political donations since 1 July 2017?

One might safely assume that sacked prime minister Malcolm Bligh Turnbull will not be personally donating $1,750,000 to the Liberal Party this time around and one wonders if the banks were as generous with their donations once the Royal Commission began requesting their presence at public hearings.

This is the last available donor list. Will the corporations on this list still back the Liberal Party so strongly? 

List of donors to the Liber... by on Scribd

https://www.scribd.com/document/396376025/List-of-donors-to-the-Liberal-Party-of-Australia-Federal-2016-17

Will a minority Morrison Government be forced to raise Newstart & Youth Allowances?

Depending on where you live in New South Wales the unemployment rate in September 2018 ranged from 2% to 9%, while youth unemployment went from 4% to 24%.

At the same time employment growth was -3% to barely 10%.

Which means that in September there were est. 195,300 job seekers on Centrelink's books in NSW and only est. 82,400 job vacancies available.

Centrelink Newstart Allowance for a single jobseeker is currently $275.10 per week and Youth Allowance is $222.90 per week for a single jobseeker under 21 years of age.

The million dollar question many people struggling on meagre unemployment benefits in rural and regional NSW will be asking themselves is whether Adam Bandt, Cathy McGowan, Kerryn Phelps, Andrew Wilkie, Rebekha Sharkie, and Bob Katter will use the increased bargaining power which comes to the crossbench in a minority government to force the government's hand on this welfare payment issue. Or will they turn to water?

Here is where the crossbench stands now.....

The NewDaily, 16 November 2018:

Pressure is mounting on the Coalition government to raise the Newstart rate following unanimous lower house crossbench support for a $75 increase.

The Guardian, 16 November 2018:

The entire lower house crossbench has come out in favour of an increase to Newstart, prompting Australia’s peak body for the community services sector to accuse the major parties of being out of touch.

Bob Katter outlined his support for an increase to the unemployment benefit on Friday, saying it would help tackle malnutrition in Indigenous communities.

His statement follows Rebekha Sharkie calling for an increase earlier this week, while the new Wentworth MP Kerryn Phelps committed to raising the payment in a candidates’ survey during the byelection campaign.

Cassandra Goldie, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, said the “diverse crossbench’s unity on increasing Newstart confirms just how out of touch the major parties are on this issue”.

“When Adam Bandt, Cathy McGowan, Kerryn Phelps, Andrew Wilkie, Rebekha Sharkie, and Bob Katter all agree, it’s time to stop talking and act,” she said.

Katter said the payment was insufficient for those in regional Queensland, where the cost of finding a job was high.

“If you’re outside of Brisbane, it’s no car, no job,” he said.

Increasing the dole “would go a long way to enabling First Australians to buy fresh fruit and vegetables”.

“You’ve crucified us with the cost of food, you’ve crucified us with the cost of electricity,” he said. “We can’t possibly live on Newstart.”

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, has said the government had no plans to increase the payment – currently $275.10 a week – despite an improved budget position, saying “I don’t think you can all of a sudden go ‘oh, let’s make whoopee’”.

He said earlier this month that the government would be more inclined to increase the pension, which stands at $458.15 a week. The pension was increased during the Gillard government while Newstart was last raised in real terms in 1994.

Labor has not committed to lifting Newstart, but signalled it would use a “root and branch review” to argue for an increase.

'Too Dumb To Know That They Are Dumb': an unexpected explanation of why political extremism in Western democracies is as it is.....

A possible explanation for the continuing presence on the Australian political stage of Pauline Hanson, David  Leyonhjelm, Tim Wilson, Darren Hinch, Ian Macdonald, Barnaby Joyce, Michaelia Cash, Tony Abbott, Scott Morrison, Peter Dutton, Christian Porter, Julie Bishop, Josh Frydenberg, Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Malcolm Turnbull - Rupert Murdoch suffers from the Dunning‐Kruger effect and has infected much of the mainstream media.

Ian G. Anson, Partisanship, Political Knowledge, and the Dunning‐Kruger Effect, April 2018:

A widely cited finding in social psychology holds that individuals with low levels of competence will judge themselves to be higher achieving than they really are. In the present study, I examine how the so‐called “Dunning‐Kruger effect” conditions citizens' perceptions of political knowledgeability. While low performers on a political knowledge task are expected to engage in overconfident self‐placement and self‐assessment when reflecting on their performance, I also expect the increased salience of partisan identities to exacerbate this phenomenon due to the effects of directional motivated reasoning. Survey experimental results confirm the Dunning‐Kruger effect in the realm of political knowledge. They also show that individuals with moderately low political expertise rate themselves as increasingly politically knowledgeable when partisan identities are made salient. This below‐average group is also likely to rely on partisan source cues to evaluate the political knowledge of peers. In a concluding section, I comment on the meaning of these findings for contemporary debates about rational ignorance, motivated reasoning, and political polarization.

PsyPost, 16 April 2018:

For his study, Anson examined 2,606 American adults using two online surveys.

He evaluated the knowledge of the participants by quizzing them regarding the number of years served by a senator, the name of the current Secretary of Energy, the party with more conservative positions regarding health care, the political party currently in control of the House of Representatives, and which of four programs the U.S. federal government spends the least on.

Most of the participants performed poorly on the political quiz — and those who performed worse were more likely to overestimate their performance.

“Many Americans appear to be extremely overconfident in their political knowledgeability, because they have no way of knowing how little they actually know about the world of politics (this is the so-called ‘double bind of incompetence’). But there’s a catch: when Republicans and Democrats engage in partisan thought processes, this effect becomes even stronger than before,” Anson explained.

“Partisans with modest factual knowledge about politics become even more convinced that they are savvier than average when they reflect on a world full of members of the opposite party. In fact, when I asked partisans to ‘grade’ political knowledge quizzes filled out by fictional members of the other party, low-skilled respondents gave out scores that reflected party biases much more than actual knowledge.”

“The results seem to indicate the existence of a widespread failure of political discourse in the United States: when a partisan talks to someone of the out-party, they are pretty likely to misjudge the political knowledgeability of themselves and their conversation partner. More often than not, this means that partisans will think of themselves as far more politically knowledgeable than an out-partisan, even when that person is extremely politically knowledgeable,” Anson told PsyPost.

“I think this has major implications for the breakdowns in political discourse we often observe in contemporary American democracy.”