Global warming, climate change, all these things are just a dream come true for politicians. I deal with evidence and not with frightening computer models because the seeker after truth does not put his faith in any consensus. The road to the truth is long and hard, but this is the road we must follow. People who describe the unprecedented comfort and ease of modern life as a climate disaster, in my opinion have no idea what a real problem is.
The Aussie ABC thinks Zoomers are staging a baby strike until their elders fix the climate crisis.
The case against babies
Elon Musk believes the collapsing birth rate is humanity’s biggest danger. But antinatalists argue having kids is little more than a procreational Ponzi scheme, and the risks are real. This is the case against babies.
As I was reading about the different branches of antinatalism, it struck me that the climate emergency represents a convergence of the philanthropic and misanthropic camps. …
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The most effective way to reduce carbon emissions was to have one fewer child, followed by not having a car at all. And thirdly, avoiding one long distance flight.
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The difficulty with that argument is the ongoing lack of accountability. Millennials blame boomers for the heat of the planet they inherited, but millennials have been adults for about two decades now, and have proven they’re either unwilling or unable to make the fundamental changes to personal or corporate accountability required to make a real difference.
In fact, Australian Zoomers like climate activist Anjali Sharma are begging their elders to acknowledge that the government owes them a duty of care not to exacerbate the climate emergency. … In 2021 Sharma and seven other teenagers tried to sue the government, arguing it had a legal duty not to cause harm to young people by exacerbating climate change when approving coal mining projects. The government fought them and won.
In the face of a lack of policy action young people are taking control in other ways.
Is it any wonder that young people are increasingly citing “climate concerns” as a reason not to have children of their own?
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‘I want to stop you becoming parents’
When David Benatar, the antinatalist, visited Sydney last year for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas he opened his presentation having to correct a somewhat misleading headline written about him in the Sydney Morning Herald. The article opened with the sentence “David Benatar wants to stop you from becoming a parent”.
As he clarified to the chuckling audience of men and women, he did not want to stop anyone from doing anything. He did not want to control anyone. He wanted to convince. He said “I don’t want to stop you from becoming a parent, I want you to stop becoming parents.”
Sometimes these confused young people wake up in time to pop out a few kids. But there are no guarantees in human fertility, sometimes the realisation that climate alarmism is overblown nonsense comes too late.
I’ll never forget an old couple who used to live next door to my grandparents. They liked kids – once or twice I visited and they fussed over me and gave me cookies. But they never had any kids of their own. They decided not to have kids because they were worried about the bomb.
One day I noticed there was no noise coming from their house. My grandpa never explained why they were suddenly missing, when I asked he looked sad and said “they aren’t there anymore”.
If there is one thing which truly makes me sad, it is these vile anti-natalists confusing people with their alarmism, talking people out of their most basic human urges, and realising the fulfilment and joy of bringing a new person into the world.
Personally , I’ve now reached a point where I believe breaking the law for the climate is the ethically responsible thing to do.” (- Chris Packham, UK Wildlife TV presenter
“… if the [Aussie] ABC provided footage to the police it would breach Four Corners journalists’ commitment to keep some activists’ identities anonymous. …”
ABC facing internal pressure to withhold Four Corners’ Woodside material
The ABC is facing internal pressure to defy an order from WA Police to hand over footage filmed for a Four Corners investigation into climate protesting and police tactics, due to air on Monday.
Staff on the public broadcaster’s media union house committee met on Friday to demand their bosses withhold the footage, warning to hand it over would damage the organisation’s reputation as a producer of public interest journalism.
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A promotional video released this week for the episode, “Escalation: Climate, protest and the fight for the future”, features footage of Disrupt Burrup Hub activists being arrested outside Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill’s Perth home during an attempted protest in August.
Under powers prescribed in the state’s Criminal Investigations Act, WA Police regularly send “orders to produce” to media outlets, including for footage of crime scenes captured by news cameras or CCTV and mobile phone footage obtained by journalists.
Disrupt Burrup Hub media advisor Jesse Noakes, who was also arrested outside O’Neill’s house for his alleged role in the protest, said that if the ABC provided footage to the police it would breach Four Corners journalists’ commitment to keep some activists’ identities anonymous.
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WA Police Minister Paul Papalia said he was comfortable with police actions.
“If Four Corners knew about these events in advance it’s actually really irresponsible and pretty disgraceful behaviour that they didn’t notify the police,” he said.
The big question in my mind though, does press freedom extend to having advance knowledge of an upcoming criminal attack on someone’s home, and not informing the police? Or to withholding video evidence of the incident when police demand access?
Let’s accept for a moment the ABC possibly wasn’t aware an alleged crime was about to be committed – maybe the “source” only informed them there was going to be a protest. Does protecting sources still apply, after people get arrested?
It would be easy to say A CRIME HAS BEEN COMMITTED at this point, but lets turn the situation on its head. Imagine the protestors were a group we sympathise with, rather than a vile bunch of hypocritical greenshirts.
Say a citizen journalist captured footage of vaccine freedom protestors clashing with police.
Most media sources have accepted the official narrative that at lockdown protests in Melbourne, during which police opened fire at protestors with rubber bullets, the lockdown protestors were the aggressors.
The official version of events, that protestors were the aggressors, that they came armed and prepared for battle. This would be the legal basis for any official demand for protest footage. But given Krystle’s vehement denial that protestors instigated the aggression, I have my doubts about the truth of the official narrative – which raises the possibility that the seized footage could be used to persecute innocent people who have been entrapped, provoked into responding by deliberate police brutality.
Similarly the January 6th protest – look at all the conflicting narratives that event has spawned, and consider how some of those narratives might be abused.
If someone attacked my home, as Meg O’Neill’s home was allegedly attacked, I’d want every effort to be made to identify and prosecute the perpetrators. But would it be right to force journalists to hand over footage which they obtained with a promise they would never reveal their sources? Aside from the obvious criticism, that such footage should never have been filmed if it was so sensitive, how can laws be framed which allow police to obtain the evidence they need to identify and prosecute criminals, yet at the same time which maintain protections for journalistic freedom?
A final question, where did the police obtain their high quality tipoff? Have the police already seen the privileged video, and now just need official access, so they can use it as evidence? If the police have an informant inside the ABC, or if the police are just covering for their friends in the ABC, making a big show of conflict with the press to conceal that the ABC gave them a friendly tipoff to let them know what was happening, that is a whole new can of worms.
This piece is not about climate but about the mindset of taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission, which has a legal charter for impartiality. This has not prevented the ABC from adopting woke/Green/Left positions on most controversies including Australia’s impending referendum to set up a new chamber of Aborigines to “make representations” to both Parliament and the executive.
This piece is not about climate but about the mindset of taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission, which has a legal charter for impartiality. This has not prevented the ABC from adopting woke/Green/Left positions on most controversies including Australia’s impending referendum to set up a new chamber of Aborigines to “make representations” to both Parliament and the executive. The ABC’s position on climate can be taken as read.
Guys, don’t cancel me, but in our household we’ve watched ABCTV 7pm News (Vic) for 40 years. It’s an addiction – like heroin, crystal meth, fentanyl. Close to 7pm we get twitchy for our fix – will the iView app work on our Smart TV (IQ just above 100)? Up to Tuesday (September 26), we accepted the assurances of the ABC Charter that ABC flagship TV would be impartial, professional and devoid of green-Left spin. But last night’s news (Tues) shattered my illusions.
I must now put in a complaint to the ABC Ombudsman (properly, Ombudswoman) Fiona Cameron. She will consider it carefully before, as I expect, rejecting it , her role being “to build on the credibility and trust Australian audiences have in the ABC.”
The same item was in the NSW 7pm news (21.30mins), and I assume around the nation. This item even wound up on the France 24 news channel, in English, albeit with some clips that didn’t make the ABC compilation. These dual versions enable me to do a compare and contrast exercise.
The item is about the Electoral Commission’s job of setting up polling stations in remote areas like Arnhem Land and the Tiwi Islands. The distances are formidable and the AEC ‘s efforts commendable. The ABC itself threw in substantial resources to get its reporters around.
So what’s my beef? Well, judging by the ABC footage, the Yes vote out there is 100 per cent. A Yes tally of 50 per cent, 60 per cent or 70 per cent might be remotely (pun) plausible. In some tiny communities (the ABC mentions one comprising ten people), even 90 per cent might be the go. But 100 per cent across the board?
This smacks of ABC desperation as polls show the Yes armies heading for their Waterloo.[1] A potent argument for No is that the Aboriginal community is thoroughly split, so why should we balandas deliver them a permanent pack of Aboriginal-Industry aristocrats?
I can imagine the conversation at Ultimo as the 7pm News piece is packaged into shape:
ABC Senior Editor: Remember we’re storytellers. Let’s go through all these grabs and vox pops and make them tell a story.
ABC Junior Editor: Good thinking! What story line do you have in mind?
ABC Senior Editor: [Guffaws] Well doh! Why are we here, you cretin?
So here’s the anatomy of the finished item. ABC Melbourne’s Tamara Oudyn, dressed all in white (is that a wrong note?), teleprompts how the AEC is encouraging vote-averse blacks to vote.
14.24 mins: Shot of shed for remote polling, with two and a half big VOTE YES! signs outside.
14.26: ABC reporter Roxanne Fitzgerald says, “Signs are up and teams are ready to go.” She must mean, “YES” signs are up and “YES” teams are ready to go.
14.29: An Aboriginal man in a white YES 23 shirt hands out a voting card.
14.32: An Aboriginal woman lodges her vote. She is holding a pamphlet which from the logo, colour and text I can identify as a YES pamphlet.
14.37: We’re now in the Tiwi Islands. ABC vox pops an Elder Bernard Tipoloura who says, “I strongly believe in people talking for us in Canberra.” Behind him are two VOTE YES! placards.
14.50: Another vox pop Aboriginal says, “Yeah, Vote YES! We need some changes!” He waves his VOTE YES! sign at the camera.
15.14: Remote Voter Service’s Aboriginal Ebony Williams Costa says, “And I’m also about getting out and informing people about Aboriginal rights.” This seems code for YES. I can’t imagine her pushing their “rights” not to have a permanent non-elected Voice assembly. Reporter Roxanne says a funeral and sorry-business is reducing voter turnout.
15.43: Marion Scrymgour, federal Labor MHR for Lingiari, is interviewed with three VOTE YES signs in the background.
15.54: Two young Aboriginal women are shown casting their votes. The one on the left holds a single flyer for YES.
16.00: Two Aboriginals with VOTE YES! shirts stand in front of no fewer than five VOTE YES! signs. Roxanne says, “Despite traditional low voter turnout, remote communities will see more voter service than ever before, with voting extended by a week to try to ensure everyone gets a say.” Everyone, that is, who votes YES, judging by the ABC item.
16.36: Ends.
To sum up, in the piece’s two minutes we see 13 “VOTE YES! ” signs, three “VOTE YES!” T-shirts, two “VOTE YES!” flyers, and the ABC finds three vox-poppers to deliver YES messaging. The ABC’s score for the “NO” camp: zero, zero, zero, and zero respectively.
Maybe Ombudswoman Cameron will tell me that the ABC crews trudged hill and spinifex looking for NO case material out there to balance the item and, sadly, none was to be found.
A friend of mine who knows how things work in such remote places, suggests this might even be true. The reason: each little settlement is controlled by a “big man” who well recognises that a Canberra Voice could operate to reinforce his power and patronage. Hence before the ABC’s visit, Big Man has patrolled to ensure no trace of NO material is seen and filmed. He might not even need to, because no-one out there wants to tangle with him.
He’s apparently taken a feed from the ABC as some shots are the same or similar.[2] But he runs other clips which the ABC perhaps left on its cutting-room floor.
He includes a scene (0.13mins) at Mowanjum on the mainland, showing a community store – and with a VOTE YES sign outside.
At 0.24 Vasina has an elderly man saying, “Our voice has to be heard somewhere, especially Parliament House and all that. It’s hard to understand what it really means. A few people voted NO, I’m not sure why, I just decided to go with this.”
So there we have it, remote NO voters do exist, but the ABC couldn’t find any or found them and ignored them.
Vasina (0.47) then abandons the backblocks in favor of high political theatre, saying,
The Prime Minister blames these No votes on misinformation campaigns, given that the Referendum aims to provide Australian’s indigenous people with a representative body to advise Parliament.
The PM doesn’t seem respectful of us NO voters, and Vasina omits that the Voice would also have the right to hector the executive. By omission, Vasina implies to Francophiles that Aborigines don’t already have advisory systems, let alone a peak $4.5-billion-a-year body, the NIAA, with 1300 staff, plus heaven knows how many other bureaucratic beasts.
Vasina at 1.00 wheels out Mr Albanese himself, but not Opposition Leader Dutton or an inconvenient Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, to spruik the YES case. The PM tells France 24 he is confident that remote Aborigines will “overwhelmingly” vote YES.
At 1.14 we see the AEC sign “Polling Place” on a remote-station fence. About 1.5 metres distant and tied to the same fence are two VOTE YES! signs (is that legal?). The cameraman (again, I’m assuming it’s an ABC person) pans into loving close-up of the upper VOTE YES! sign, then scrolls down and pans lovingly on the second VOTE YES! sign. Two more VOTE YES! signs are inside the yard. A fifth VOTE YES! is across the track. Some message here perhaps?
Unlike the ABC, France 24 then plugs in (1.35) stock footage of perhaps 200 people at a city rally. At first sight it’s a YES rally, with a chap in foreground wearing a T-shirt with “Stop the Genocide” on the back. It’s actually a NO rally and the TV crew (ABC?) are sneakily emphasising a lone anti-NO campaigner.
At 1.40 someone there holds up a sign (at last!), “VOTE NO – Fairaustralia.com.au”. At 1.48 we even get to see two more VOTE NO signs, one reading, VOTE NO – Do Not Comply”. The item then fades out with Vasina mentioning that conservatives don’t want Australia divided on racial lines.
If you ask me, Vasina is out of his depth in this coverage, and maybe allows in a smidgeon of NO material by accident or because it’s tough trying to explain complex things to a beret-wearing audience 17,000km away.
My task now is to persuade my rusted-on ABC household to subscribe to Sky News, or at second-best, haul up France 24 on YouTube. Although head of the household, I still prefer consensus.
Tony Thomas’s new book from Connor Court is Anthem of the Unwoke – Yep! The other lot’s gone bonkers. $34.95 from Connor Court here
[1] The Duke of Wellington is running the NO camp.
[2] I might be wrong and the shots might have come from some TV pool arrangement.
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