Cross cultural fauna

More AI fun. Check out this tartan wearing, and bagpipe playing koala. 

 

Can hate and tolerance coexist?

As any thoughtful student of history will be aware, antisemitism is the oldest hatred. In this recent presentation to the Sydney Institute, David Harris, former Chief Executive Officer of the American Jewish Committee, gives an overview of historical and contemporary antisemitism. 

Unity over division

While recognising that some Australians, Australia Day is a day of pain, it can still be celebrated in a reflective frame of mind. Australia Day brings people together to celebrate in different ways, with  community events, recognition of local achievements, and by sharing food, music, and laughter. I cherish the chance to slow down, reconnect with loved ones, and celebrating the unique outdoors, humour, and diverse cultures that define Australia.

Editorial. Australia Day protests show much work to do on civics | The Australian

Secularised Christmas

Clickbait article from the Daily Mail Australia about Carols by Candlelight, held in Melbourne, Australia, on Christmas Eve. This is lazily written. All the writer needs to do is collate some social media activity, with anonymous attribution for legal reasons, and the article writes itself.

As for the event itself, it was well done as a television production. Unlike in recent years, none of the performers forgot the stage etiquette of appearing in an ensemble setting, by upstaging other performers.

This is what did not sit well with me. Why did it take almost an hour of running time before an actual Christmas carol was sung? And why was not Jesus mentioned, even once? 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-15411465/Nine-Carols-Candlelight-viewers-slam-Sammy-J.html

Guilty before proven otherwise

Just like Lady Macbeth's "damn spot," some Australian critics see that Australia has a great collective national guilt that it can never assuage. 

Real men read

Australians, especially young men, are reading less than ever before. The data shows that the population cohort that reads the least is males aged 15-24, with only 10.1% reading on any given day. The trend is reinforced from a young age, with parents more likely to read to their daughters than sons. The book industry initiative Australia Reads is calling for a national strategy to remind people of the benefits of reading, such as improved mental health, empathy, and focus.

I see that libraries are involved in this campaign. I support this, unlike some other initiatives that libraries are involved in. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-07-14/australians-especially-men-are-reading-less-than-ever-before/105422070

https://australiareads.org.au/

Idolatry is a dirty word

AI image of Baal. 

Uncomfortable but necessary reading. 

Baal, Molech, and Ashtoreth: How Ancient Demons Are Rewriting Australia’s Culture - The Daily Declaration

Scooped

A newspaper journalist manages to correctly spell “its” and misspell “it’s” in the same block of text. Such are the perils of the 24 hour news cycle.

https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/labor-tells-voters-youll-be-worse-off-under-dutton-in-new-campaign-ad/news-story/b72d59fbf676effc9358519411b829d5

Message discipline

The Australian Republican Movement has been campaigning since 1991 for Australia to become a republic. This means replacing the current constitutional arrangements with a popularly elected Australian president.

Citing their own research, they claim that 92 per cent of Australians either support a republic, or are open to the idea. However, independent polling shows that only 32 per cent of Australians strongly support a republic, and 35 per cent support retaining the constitutional monarchy.  

Undeterred, they launched a campaign branding King Charles's visit to Australia as his "farewell tour." Given the King's ongoing cancer treatment, the timing seems tactless. The Australian Monarchist League described the campaign as "terribly disrespectful." 

I'm inclined to agree with them. 

https://www.malaymail.com/news/world/2024/10/14/a-royal-send-off-activists-playfully-dub-king-charles-visit-to-australia-the-monarchys-farewell-tour/153618

https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/46044-one-year-king-charles-reign-where-do-australian-at

Hairs on the back of your neck

Here's a motivational song for the Australian Olympics team, from 1988. A roster of some of Australia's best known singers, musicians, and athletes collaborated on this single, You're Not Alone. Profits went to the Australian Olympic Federation. It peaked at number 18 on the Australian Top 40 in May 1988. 

Feel the tension in the air

In a 2013 book, author and former Harvard professor, Daniel Goldhagen, described antisemitism as the "devil that never dies." Antisemitism has spiked since the October 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, with many incidents of antisemitic attacks occurring around the world. 

According to the Jerusalem Post, the annual report for 2023 and January 2024 on the fight against antisemitism published by the Diaspora Ministry, the World Zionist Organization, and the Jewish Agency showed that between October and December, the number of antisemitic incidents worldwide increased by more than six times than the number of incidents between January and September of that year. 

Equally concerning is that according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, antisemitic incidents in Australia increased by 738 per cent in 2023, compared to the previous year. 

Surely this should concern any right thinking person. Nobody should feel unsafe in their community, just because of their ethnic or religious background. 

Have a lamington

Happy Australia Day to my reader. To mark the day, I present the Australian national anthem, Advance Australia Fair, arranged by the late composer, Tommy Tycho (1928-2013)

Tennis racket?

If you're a tennis fan, January in Australia means the Australian Open, the first grand slam of the year. Cast your mind back to January 2022, when Novak Djokovic was deported from Australia for being unvaccinated, and banned from entering Australia for three years. He had unsuccessfully sought a medical exemption. This ban was later overturned, and he made a triumphant return to the 2023 tournament. In doing so, he has become a figurehead for the so called anti-Covid vaccination freedom movement, who rallied around him at the time. 

In a February 2022 interview with BBC News, Djokovic denied that he wanted special treatment, saying that, "So I take this very seriously, I really don't like someone thinking I've misused something... in my own favour, in order to, you know...eventually go to Australia."

Even so, being a high profile and wealthy athlete gave him the power to challenge Covid rules, whereas ordinary Australians could not. These were the ones who were kept from leaving their homes, earning a living, visiting ill or ailing family members or friends in hospital and aged care. Where has Djokovic ever expressed any empathy for them? The freedom movement may have supported him, but he didn't support them. As far as I know, he has never expressed any support for ordinary people who suffered under harsh covid restrictions. It is hard not to conclude that he was only standing up for his own rights, not anybody else's. 

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/novak-djokovic-vaccine-australia-special-treatment/621270/

The television equivalent of a lefty university student newspaper

Sydney Institute director Gerard Henderson's latest Media Watchdog blog makes for entertaining reading. The Drum, a current affairs and news discussion programme, the panelists were discussing the newly formed AUKUS defence alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. 

True to form, if this excerpt is any indication, they regurgitated leftist clichés which assert that in foreign affairs and defence matters, Australia is subservient to the United States. In their way of thinking, America is an oppressive, imperialist power. They also insinuate that the AUKUS alliance is an unprovoked act of aggression towards China, appearing to ignore that it is building up its military, and clearly has ambitions to become a superpower, creating a network of client states through its Belt and Road Initiative. 

Is it not prudent policy to preemptively form alliances to counter potential or real threats to international stability? More substantive and nuanced analysis, such as that produced in a recent report from the Lowy Institute, concludes that China is a potential threat to Australia. Likewise, Chinese President Xi Jinping's threats against the West should not be dismissed as political theatre. He clearly has global ambitions for his country. The question is how they will be achieved. 

https://www.lowyinstitute.org/publications/australia-and-growing-reach-china-s-military#sec45151

Tragic

Eight teenage girls have committed suicide in the first 7 months of this year in Victoria, a marked increase in the number of young women taking their lives in a tragic toll being closely watched by the Victorian Coroners Court. The alarming rise has been recorded by the court amid a deepening youth mental health crisis that expert professor Patrick McGorry has described as a “shadow pandemic”. New court data reveals 8 girls committed suicide to July 31, up from just one in the first 7 months of last year. In the same period in 2019, Coroner’s Court statistics show three teenage girls took their own lives while the number was four in 2018 and three in 2017. “The court has noted a potentially higher than expected number of suspected suicides among women under 18 this year,” a court spokeswoman said.

“While it is too early to determine whether this represents a trend, the court is continuing to monitor closely.” The rise in suicides comes as the state is gripped by a teen mental health crisis that experts are linking to Covid-19 and lockdowns. Teenage girls are among the hardest hit with increasing eating disorders, self-harm and suicidal thoughts or actions during the 18-month pandemic. Professor McGorry, who heads youth mental health service Orygen, said problems suffered by young Victorians had grown worse and health services were overwhelmed. “The system is drowning or crumbling,” he said. “This is the shadow pandemic. And every lockdown makes it even worse.

“It’s not that the government hasn’t recognised the problem, it’s that they don’t have the same sense of urgency, federal or state, about addressing it like they do with Covid.” Professor McGorry described this year’s eight suicides as a “real phenomenon” and said they needed to be considered in the broader context of the pandemic and lockdowns. “There is an increase in deaths and that is occurring from a rising base of suicidal behaviour particularly among young women,” he said. “There has been a very substantial surge, 20 to 30 per cent of deliberate self-harm and suicidal behaviour that is occurring in particularly young women and that is what is flooding into emergency departments. “The coroner is cautious about over-reacting. You have to put the number of suicides in context of the rising tide of suicidal behaviour amongst young women.” Girls have been hit during the pandemic as they battle eating disorders.

There was a sharp increase in new eating disorder cases early this year, from a weekly average of 654 in 2020 to 878 this year, a 34% jump. The number of teenagers rushed to hospital after self-harming and suicidal thoughts spiked 51%, rising from a weekly average of 98 in 2020 to 148 this year. The most serious cases, where teenagers have needed resuscitation and emergency care, jumped 44.9%, with the 2020 weekly average of 19.8 rising to 28.7 this year. Victorian Liberal Democrats MP David Limbrick said he was concerned the Andrews government did not understand how lockdowns affected the mental health of young people. “They have been saying they have been spending huge amounts of money on mental health, and yet children who need help can’t get access to it,” he said.

Limbrick went on “The mental and physical health effects of lockdowns on children are catastrophic. They are becoming socially isolated.” Mr Limbrick said schools should be immediately opened, and the government should set a date when all pandemic restrictions end. Resilience speaker Graeme Cowan has spoken about his 5 year battle with depression, and the habits he has cultivated to look after his mental health amid uncertainty. The Victorian government acknowledged the emotional toll of lockdowns. “We know how tough repeated lockdowns are on all Victorians, and that the emotional, social and financial toll of the pandemic is profound for so many people, but we just can’t risk the devastation of an uncontrolled outbreak of the Delta variant spreading rapidly across the state,” a spokeswoman said.

The government said it had invested more than $225m to help boost mental health services during the pandemic, and also referred to its $3.8bn delivered in this year’s state budget to implement the findings of the mental health royal commission. A spokeswoman for youth mental health organisation Headspace said their national online and phone counselling service noted a spike in demand “associated with strict lockdown periods both in Victoria and in other states experiencing heavier restrictions, such as Greater Sydney and NSW.” The government did not respond to questions about the eight suicides, pointing to broader court data that showed overall suicide numbers in 2020 were in line with those in 2019.

A senior child psychiatrist said the rise in teenage girls committing suicide reflected health department data confirming a mental health crisis. “There has been a sustained increase in referrals and presentations of young people with self-harm and severe emotional distress,” the expert said. “The data shows this demand has persisted independent of whether the state has been in lockdown or not. “One might hope there could be as much attention paid by the press and the government to suicides, and the monthly reports on children’s mental health presentations as there is on Covid cases and hospitalisations each day. “ But we in the field are no longer holding our breath. “The continuing injury, fear and despair will continue to take their toll, long after the active trauma of restrictions ever ends.”

Source: Compiled by APN from media reports

Remember them

 

To mark Anzac Day, here is Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison's speech, given at the dawn service at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. 

Right wing people are evil

While I no longer work in higher education, I still take a passing interest in it. Political and cultural trends impact the academic world, and certainly the humanities, but in my day, it was possible to be a conservative and not feel like a pariah on campus. It is reasonable to speculate if the current crop of students could say the same thing. 

According to Kevin Donnelly, university Arts departments in Australia are now infested with:

"neo-Marxist critical theory intent on imposing cultural-left group think based on a rainbow alliance of radical philosophies ranging from postmodernism, deconstructionism to radical feminist, gender and postcolonial theories."

If it is valid to connect this with another trend, revealed in a survey published in late 2020; the problem of British university students hiding their opinions from their peers, both in the classroom and on campus in general, because they feared negative repercussions. 

No Australian data is available, but there is no reason to believe that the situation would be any different in that country. This would be a fascinating research project for someone with the time and inclination to establish this definitively. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8973601/QUARTER-students-self-censor-opinions-fear-universitys-woke-cancel-culture.html

https://www.spectator.com.au/2021/04/the-federal-government-didnt-kill-university-arts-departments-try-cultural-marxism/

Besmirching your heritage

Generations of Australians were avid readers of The Bulletin, a political and business magazine that was published from 1880 to 2018. It was controversial but respected, which contributed to its longevity. Among its significant contributors were Barbara Baynton, C.J. Dennis, Dorothy Mackellar, Nettia Palmer, Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Patterson, and Ethel Turner, all of whom were respected literary figures, and the respected political journalist, Laurie Oakes. 

The Bulletin lives on as a Facebook news site, but aside from sharing the name, it is a pale imitation of the original. It touts itself as an independent, unbiased, non partisan news source, free of the sinister tentacles of Rupert Murdoch, and the alleged Liberal Party bias of his newspapers and cable television network. 

Unfortunately, their answer to this is to publish puff pieces about the Australian Labor Party. It's poor form to accuse your rivals of bias, and at the same time appear completely oblivious to your own. The administrators don't like their views being challenged. Disagree with them, they'll belittle and block you. 

They also engage in gutter journalism, perpetrating rumours and gossip that portrays their political opponents in a negative light, and their spelling and grammar is poor. If this publication was in print, frankly, I wouldn't even use it to line my cat's litter tray. 

Racists, racists everywhere

Actual racism, 1899

Full disclosure. I am a supporter of Advance Australia, the far right, reactionary conservative version of the progressive political activist group, GetUp. This is from a recent member newsletter about one of their campaigns against the Australian government's Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Bill, which they claim unfairly singles out China, and is therefore racist: 

"We’ve now heard it all from the Chinese Communist Party.

Taking chutzpah to a level beyond the stratosphere, the CCP regime’s ambassador to Canberra, Cheng Jingye, has labelled a respected Australian Senator a Nazi.

Seriously? 

Our country is not the one with the concentration camps for Muslims, organ harvesting from the bodies of political opponents, forcing women to abort their babies and wargaming the invasion of neighbouring countries. 

Senator Eric Abetz is chairing the Senate’s inquiry into Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s Foreign Relations Bill which seeks to shine a light on CCP interference in Australia.

In the course of the inquiry, Senator Abetz has highlighted the CCP’s concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims, which the respected Economist magazine labels a “crime against humanity.”

He has pointed out that Chinese nationals living in Australia are afraid to speak because they know their relatives will be targeted by the CCP’s equivalent of the Gestapo.

For pushing back on CCP interference in our universities, politics and strategic infrastructure sights, Ambassador Jingye accuses Abetz of “Goebbels’ tricks,” referring to Hitler’s propaganda minister.

The supreme irony is that it is Jingye’s CCP under his dictator boss Xi Jinping that has become the master of propaganda to cover up its atrocities and its plans to expand its empire.

The CCP’s ability to lie and get away with it would make Goebbels proud – especially the way the CCP has completely hoodwinked the left in this country.

As noted CCP watcher Clive Hamilton pointed out to the Senate inquiry, the arrogance of Australia’s intellectuals had opened the door for the CCP to march into our universities.

Meanwhile Abetz is making no apologies and hit back at the Ambassador.

“The unattractive belligerent and indeed aggressive tone of His Excellency’s response confirms why so many in the Chinese diaspora live in fear of the Chinese Communist dictatorship even here in Australia,” he said.

Sadly the clueless Left in this country have swallowed the CCP propaganda and have sought to turn the tables back on Abetz, accusing him of “racism” for asking witnesses to the Senator inquiry whether or not they would denounce the CCP.

Calling on witnesses to denounce a regime which runs a gulag for Muslims should is something you would think the Left would applaud Abetz for doing.

But such is their hatred of conservative Senators that they would rather side with an evil foreign regime than with their domestic political foes.

GetUp immediately labelled Senator Abetz a “racist” and started an on-line petition against him, which by the way, only garnered 23,000 signatures despite GetUp boasting a membership north of half a million people.

“No one deserves to be bullied based on their background or what they look like,” GetUp’s petition says. 

Tell that to the Muslim women the CCP forcibly sterilise or force to marry Chinese Han men as part of their campaign of ethnic cleansing.

The kids at GetUp are so blinded by their hatred of who we are as a proud Western nation that they will flip morality and truth on its head.

The sooner Australians wake-up to GetUp and the radical Left, the better.

In the meantime, keep pursuing the CCP’s ugly tentacles reaching into our nation, Senator."

As a layperson, I am not across the intricacies of these matters, but on the face of it, GetUp's campaign looks like cheap political point scoring. While the Bill may have unforseen economic and political implications, as recent analysis by legal firm Minter Ellison reveals, GetUp conflates criticising the Chinese government's engagement with other countries with attacking the Chinese people. Their contribution to this debate is not very constructive. 

https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Foreign_Affairs_Defence_and_Trade/AustForeignRelations2020

https://www.minterellison.com/articles/impacts-of-australias-proposed-foreign-relations-bill

No right turn?

Gerard Henderson, co-founder of the Sydney Institute, is a prominent critic of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), Australia's national broadcaster. In his Media Watch Dog blog, he wrote:

"The Daily Telegraph in London reported on Tuesday that Tim Davie, the incoming director-general of the BBC, has a reform program for Britain’s public broadcaster – which is funded by means of a compulsory licence fee.

Put simply, Mr Davie wants to tackle what he regards as left-wing bias in the BBC’s comedy output.  As Bill Gardiner reported, the incoming managing director believes that the comedy shows on BBC radio and television are unfairly biased against the Tories, Donald Trump, Brexit and the like.  Tim Davie is also concerned that too many BBC comedy shows promote a “metropolitan, London-centric and left-wing view of the world”.  Sounds familiar?

In his Daily Telegraph report, Bill Gardiner mentioned that some BBC presenters have criticised the left-wing takeover of BBC comedy. For example, Andrew Neil who referred to The Mash Report as “self-satisfied, self-adulatory, unchallenged left-wing propaganda”.

Many of the problems identified by Mr Davie can be found on the ABC. Its main comedy programs – The Weekly  with Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell – are hostile to the Coalition. And Mark Humphries, who appears each fortnight at the end of Thursday’s 7.30 program, has essentially one “joke” – sending up a Liberal or Nationals politician as a toff or a hick in a manner which bears no resemblance to anyone except Mark Humphries.

Bill Gardiner also reported that, under Tim Davie’s management, BBC journalists and presenters will be reined in on social media from airing their political views while there will be a crackdown on BBC celebrities making money on the side moonlighting for private companies. All this was anticipating Mr Davie’s speech to BBC staff yesterday.

In the Daily Telegraph on 3 September Robert Mendick reported what Mr Davie said in his address.  It was much the same as had been forecast.  Except that the new BBC director-general was even more blunt – telling staff:

We urgently need to champion and recommit to impartiality. It is deliverable and it is essential…. If you want to be an opinionated columnist or a partisan campaigner on social media then that is a valid choice, but you should not be working at the BBC.

In other words, there will be no future roles at the BBC for activist journalists who are driven by what the new director-general terms their “personal agendas”.  As MWD readers know only too well, the ABC is replete with left-wing activist journalists advancing their political agendas.

It is early days and no one knows whether Tim Davie will press for reform when he settles into the job as BBC director-general.  In Australia, Mark Scott promised to reform the ABC when he was appointed managing director and (so-called) editor-in-chief in 2006.  But Mr Scott was quickly subsumed into the ABC’s Conservative-Free-Zone culture and backed off.  His successors Michelle Guthrie and David Anderson did not even bother to address the need to introduce political diversity into the taxpayer funded public broadcaster.  Also ABC presenters, since Mark Scott’s time, have felt free to weigh into various debates on social media.  They present as activists in the morning and journalists in the evening.

Tim Davie may not succeed with his stated intention to reform the BBC, including the creation of political diversity.  However, if he does, this might provide a model for the next ABC managing director when he/she inherits a Sydney/Melbourne centric public broadcaster which is replete with left-wing activists."

As for the ABC, it is vital national institution in Australia, fulfilling a function that commercial media outlets cannot. Having said that, I get tired of its comedy programs, relentlessly making fun of conservatives, as if having conservative political views is something to be ashamed of. The last time I watched Mad as Hell, I think I may have laughed only once or twice. And I thought I was just becoming a cranky, middle aged white man. 

https://thesydneyinstitute.com.au/blog/issue-512/#editorial