To the Honourable Chris Hayes,
You are on the wrong side of the debate on equal marriage rights. You’re also on the wrong side of society (in the minority who disagree with gay marriage). You will judged in future to be in the same class as those in the past arguing that Aboriginals remain classified as fauna and women not receive the vote as they have duties in the kitchen to attend to. Do you really want to be in that category of ignorant human beings publicly voicing their support for discrimination.

Make no mistake: this law will change like race and gender inequality was thrown out in the past – you are just making a fool out of yourself in the meantime. I would have thought someone with your background in workplace relations and the like would be well aware of the discrimination laws and how they can be directly and indirectly unfair.

I wonder if you would be so quick to announce you support inequality if you substituted race for someone’s sexuality. The SMH quoted you as saying “‘You do believe in certain things. I can’t apologise for my beliefs,”
(from http://www.smh.com.au/national/we-wont-vote-for-gay-marriage-even-if-party-changes-its-position-say-labor-right-mps-20111130-1o766.html )

You do believe in certain things: but you’re like a racist boasting about how you think black people shouldn’t be allowed to marry outside their race. It’s nothing to be proud of and you should be apologising for your poor judgement.

No one picks their sexuality Mr Hayes, but they do pick whether to be an ignorant, prejudiced homophobic fool.

Do you even know anyone who is gay? Chances are with your views they have kept it a private matter around you if you’ve made your views known in the past. If you weren’t espousing such a small minded view you might find that gay people are just like straight people. Just like when racists actually get around to getting to know people of a different skin colour they find that they were just ignorant in the extreme: you are no different to the racist who has never bothered to take the time to know a person of different skin colour.

As a heterosexual with some sense of fairness I’m not about to dictate that someone else should have special discrimination against them because of their sexuality.It actually makes me cringe when I attend weddings and they get to the part “Australian law defines marriage as between a man and a woman” because I think it is absolutely unnecessary.
Quite how someone else’s marriage affects you is beyond me or perhaps you are worried you’ll have no more excuses and will promptly find yourself married to another male if this bit of discriminatory legislation is fixed?

Anyhow, I’d urge you to reconsider the type of view you have that is on the same side as the racists and the misogynists who choose to discriminate on something which a person has no choice whatsoever. By all means discriminate against people with chosen views, but if you can’t in good conscience replace “gay” with “mixed race” then that’s a sign your views are rather repulsive. That you are a member of the ALP and so woefully ignorant of the need for equality to remove injustice makes me think that you might be better off in another party. I believe the Christian Democrats might have a suitably backward ideology that is more of a fit?

So unlike you, I believe in equality and I think you should apologise for your beliefs. Just as racists and sexist people should apologise and learn some ethics.

You’ve declared yourself to be in bad company Mr Hayes, I suggest you lift yourself away from such a repugnant mob and carry yourself and your views to a level that the “The Honourable” out the front of your title should indicate. “To the homophobic Chris Hayes” would be more accurate at the moment.

regards,
Nathan Lee

For those who came in late..
For those of you living under a rock there’s been an incredibly nasty, sensationalist and flat-out deceitful campaign by the Liberal/National Parties (and the big polluters that pay their campaign funds). Abbott as leader has staked his reputation on killing this legislation in favour of a scheme that would tax everyone and give extra tax cuts to big polluters while spending tax dollars planting trees to offset emissions that would continue to be free for polluters. Yep, doesn’t make any sense and only a brave economist would be lining up to sing the praises of Abbott’s alternative.

CO2 price Concepts
Anyhow, the basic concept is that CO2 is no longer to be treated as unlimited free pollution as it has been so far throughout history. The first step is a rather small one really (despite the amount of apocalyptic predictions of LNP supporters pissed off that the NBN didn’t kill the country): top 500 polluters will be tracked and made to pay (to varying degrees) $23/tonne of CO2 (Abbott seemed to think that CO2 was weightless, gives you an idea what kind of twit we are but one or two parliamentarians away from running the country).

Handouts.. some needed, others not
The bit that comes with an attempt to soften the impact is a whole bunch of compensation, not only for end consumers (more than compensating majority of households) but also for a bunch of industries that might be impacted by it. This sparked a whole bunch of the Plasma Proletariat and just plain ignorant people thinking that they would be worse off when in fact they would be making money. I’m one of the people who will not be compensated, although as a 100% green power user I’d expect my major costs to have already been taken care of by my energy plan being from wind power. But that didn’t stop a bunch of low income people from insisting they’d be broke when the calculator showed they would be making money. This loud complaining was partnered with a rather scary anti-science climate change denial stance by masses of people.

The 7 stages of Climate Science Denial

Cars continue to pollute for free

Petrol was for some insane reason (perhaps thanks to short sighted campaigning by organisations like the NRMA) excluded.. So no end in sight for the rise of the car and petrol fumes on the street. The sooner we get rid of fossil fuels from our vehicle transport the better. Can you imagine how many places would be infinitely more liveable with less traffic noise and fumes? How many respiratory issues would go away. It would certainly be nice to be able to breathe deeply in CBD areas during lunchtime.

Seems likely to work

I think the notion that pollution that was free now costing something will immediately result in businesses looking to reduce costs. Anyone who claims otherwise has no idea whatsoever about how businesses work. Cost is about the only language that you can speak to businesses that have legal obligation to put profit above all else if you expect them to pay attention. End consumers can exercise their choice by taking their money where the lower cost from pollution efficiency results in a competitive advantage. Businesses will start working groups to examine how they can improve efficiency and we take a step toward a leaner, less polluting industry.

Hell, they might even figure out a way to make that snake oil clean coal work?

So let’s hope that it makes it through.. So what if we’re wrong about it all? Well, we all win.

“If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses, eighty-five percent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated.”

- George Orwell in the novel 1984.

Well, it appears the struggling, lowest level of society has now been exposed a number of times by front page exposure. Most recently it’s been the apocalyptic carbon tax that will bankrupt everyone. Though a while back I wrote a draft (that I am now publishing) about the “poor well off” after a budget plan to HOLD STEADY FOR TWO YEARS the cut off for certain welfare at AUD$150K. Note: that’s not “cut” anything as is reported, just decided not to raise it with inflation/CPI etc. Very similar to the carbon tax that includes generous payouts for poorer families which trail off so that those earning plenty have to pay a bit.

Well, they finally got to a small part of it.

Every time this happens we see papers queue the pictures of concerned looking families (with their cars conspicuously not in shot lest we see two urban 4WDs sitting in a McMansion driveway) and bleating like Stephen Boyle did in the SMH letters:
“I’m just a wage slave to the ungrateful masses“:

I am one of those people who earn just over $150,000 a year. My wife has decided to stay at home this year and look after our new baby while I continue my work designing internet infrastructure in Third World countries.
Because I have worked very hard and diligently and contribute to society in a specialist way that few others can – but am not greedy and amoral enough to be truly rich – I end up paying for every one else’s welfare.
When our little one was born, we missed out on the baby bonus because my income was just above the $150,000 threshold. I pay $44,450 a year in tax and the Medicare levy, which I do not begrudge. By contrast, if my wife and I both earned $75,000 a year, we would collectively pay, in raw terms, $32,700 a year in tax between us. Upon that, we would not pay a Medicare surcharge.

As a result of Wayne Swan’s budget, I don’t get the dependant spouse rebate, which would have partially redressed the imbalance that my family pays in tax compared with a couple of $75,000 earners. Yet I am not wealthy enough to avoid this tax burden.
I now look at my child with sadness. I tried to do my best for her, but the government parasites got the better of me.
She shall have to attend public school and be treated at public hospitals while I contemplate the folly of working hard for the ungrateful masses.
Stephen Boyle, Gosford

It could almost be a piss take.. But not quite.

The Struggling Proles and their Plasma TV scraps of society
I’d like to suggest a term for “slaves” like Stephen Boyle who complain when they don’t get as many unnecessary handouts: “The Plasma Proletariat”. These are the well off types who think they are on Struggle Street or hard done by when they are denied another handout for a bigger plasma TV or mortgage repayments they decided to over-commit to.

Where do the taxes go?
For your information Stephen your $44.5K of tax pays for the following: Social security & welfare: $14,085, general govt. services: $11,377, health: $6,969, education: $4,043, defence: $2,573, industry & workforce: $1,804, infrastructure, transport & energy: $1,536 and community services & culture: $1,063 (From www.wheredomytaxesgo.com.au ).

Ungrateful or just stupid?
Ungrateful would be someone who thinks they (or their children) don’t benefit from that list in any significant way, particularly when they mention schools and hospitals in the same breath. Not to mention the massive amount of investment from every taxpayer back to the dawn of the nation who paid for things like the snowy river hydro scheme, highways, airports, hospitals, schools etc.

I don’t have kids, so can Mr Boyle send me a cheque for the money he is sponging relative to me by having a kid (education, hospital, DOCS funding, medical research, swimming pools, playground equipment, baby changing rooms, time spent by politicians kissing said babies)? I don’t see that kid earning its keep like they do in developing nations where they’d be stitching together our shoes/clothes and sticking apple logos to iPhones.

Happy to refund it if/when I have kids but in the meantime I don’t see why I should be a slave to the breeding masses like Mr Boyle when I’m not doing the same.

Why stop there: what about my parents generation: “lazy” buggers are starting to retire after (only) working their entire lives, paying for us to be fed/clothed/educated/housed and now they’ll be wanting healthcare, kids off their lawns and a bit of time to travel and relax.. Oh the gall of them to make “slaves” of us all by daring to retire!

Prediction time
Quite why we give out baby bonuses as a reward for adding to the global population problem I’m not sure. The bonus should be to anyone who helps REDUCE or HOLD STEADY the population by having 2 or less kids. Mark my words they’ll be looking back in the future when the population is double today (and our planet completely stripped bare) and scratching their heads.

Impact of the baby bonus

Some facts please
You watch, I’ll bugger up something in these.. But here goes.

Contrary to the assertions in articles on this $150K thing that it affects a big chunk of people it doesn’t really. Some articles do a bit more homework but still make it sound like it affects more people than it does e.g. this one says at the start the measures affect 17% of the population but this measure would only affect the portion of the 17% of community that (in year 1 of the freeze) earn between $150K and $154K (assuming 3% inflation). In year 2 anyone who is earning between $150K and $159K. It might also include people who get a pay cut and would have earned those amounts or ones who get a pay rise. Under the old system the cut off would be $154K at the end of the 1st year.

So if for the 2 years you always earn $160K and above then this whole thing is irrelevant, if you earn $150K and below likewise.

I can haz moar handout?

Just how many could that be that might fit in this $150-160K over two years transition?

Small number really and majority of the articles I’ve read appear to have not done their homework or else made little real attempt at highlighting the facts as they try to make a storm in a teacup.

Saying that because 17% of households or 3% of individuals earn over $150K is like saying that if the USA lowered the drinking age to 18 that affects the ability to drink of everyone over age of 18.
No, it only affects anyone falling between ages of 18 and 21. Well aside from extra queues at the bar.. But anyone already able to drink can still do it, anyone younger than 18 still can’t drink anyhow. Politicians seem to realise this quite well when it comes to retrospectively punishing younger generations by removing the things that they enjoyed or made use of to get to where they are today (e.g. Federal Liberals gutting public education and in particular universities and their funding cuts/HECS fee increases under Howard).

More facts.. MOAAAR!
How does $150K compare to the average wage? I won’t compare it to say poorer nations to really show how well off that is.. Let’s stick to Australia only:

A salary of $150K/year is around 105K AFTER TAX. That’s $8,750/month or $2020/week AFTER TAX or $287/day if you need to go that far down.

According to most recent ABS stats on average weekly earnings Public & Private sector

So the $150K salary is 2.26 times the average before tax.
If we make it completely skewed: $2020/week after tax is still multiples of the before tax rates that mere average people earn.
So even with just stephen working and his wife earning nothing: his household income is still 2.26 times that of a household with just one average earner. There’s that .26 hanging around as a nice buffer as well, so he could hire someone on an average wage for a quarter of the working week to just hang around the house and it’d still be as if the house had two average earners in the house.
So $150K is not a bad household income, there’s little need for complaining about “missing out”.

Glass houses and all that..
I’ll take a moment to be clear that I’m not intending to give the misleading impression I’m on a low income by comparing these. I could, quite rightly, be one of the low income people in the country that are having a genuinely tough time. Stuck in poorly paid jobs or unemployment/underemployment.
But I’m not one of those people and I’m well aware of my stable job, good wage, literate, tertiary educated, no debt, high savings, no kids, quick commute, no mortgage existence in a safe, modern, civilised country called Australia. I do things like volunteer to teach kids and donate to charity because I’m in that nice stable position where I can afford to do so. Someone actually struggling to afford to eat and the like is the type of person who really needs access to govt assistance, but not me and not people like Stephen (who I think tried slyly to dismiss his high paying job as some sort of charity effort he was doing for the developing world rather than the reality of a well paying IT job that is most likely something to do with outsourcing so that a company can do away with hiring as many people in Australia).

I’m complaining about people in a comfortably high wage bracket (like me) who really are in no state of “struggle” other than that which they manufacture out of greed and desire to keep up with the neighbours. I might think I had an expensive weekend because I went out drinking or to an expensive dinner a few times. I don’t for an instant look to the govt to make up my drinking money shortfall: it did plenty in supplying me with the stable environment in which to get educated and grow up healthy (yes, mum and dad probably had a teeny bit to do with that too). I don’t look to the govt to pay my rent in the same way these people seem to want the govt to pony up money for their mortgage payments or new car loan.

Unlike these greedy insatiable sods I am very aware that I did grow up in a great country with great education, health, incredibly high quality of life, extremely high literary rate, safetynets etc that makes us VERY fortunate. So fortunate that even with paying a wheelbarrow of tax and without getting lump sums thrown at me: I seem to be doing ok. Perhaps I’m just not rich enough to be struggling like BHP and Gina Rinehart who seem perpetually about to shut up shop forever if they paid anywhere near my tax rate. Gina: I’ve also read Ayn Rand and she’s wrong: selfishness is not a virtue unless you’re a sociopath.

One needs assistance, the other is probably ok

There’s no need for me to pursue a selfish desire to get as much raw cash handout from the tax system as possible as I think the churches and billionaires do enough of that for all of us.

Solution for the Plasma Proletariat
I have a solution for these poor downtrodden over-mortgaged upper class welfare struggle street proles: charity. They should be used to the concept from a receiving end as they hold their moisturised hands out for a slice of the tax cake (that’s after the First Home Owner’s Grant rort, baby bonuses, Ruddmoney and so on on top of everything else in society).
Stephen or anyone else for that matter is free to donate to charity to reduce his taxable income, but like taxation, charity requires thinking of more than just yourself and your family.
If you get a pay rise (heavens!) that bumps you over $150K and you’d rather not pay your own way but rather rort an unnecessary handout: just give the excess away to a charity like Oxfam or perhaps the Red Cross can heal their bleeding hearts.

Although anyone that blinded by a desire to grab at govt handouts should probably donate to Fred Hollows.

Perhaps this whole $150K freeze will remove the barrier that was forcing these people to turn down any pay rises that would have pushed them over the $150K limit.
*PHEW*
What a relief huh?

Dear Prime Minister Gillard,

Currently you have taken away parents’ and kids’ choice of a secular education by violating our secular constitution and funding the establishment of Christianity in schools.

Preachers preach, teachers teach.
If Chaplains are not there to preach/proselytise or convert (as they themselves have admitted in the past.. see: here for how they defined it and recent comments by the head of one of the organisations that hire almost all Chaplains in Victoria): then why are they religious?
If they are not there (or qualified) to counsel kids then why are they boasting about saving lives and saving suicidal kids?

Would you hire on the cheap?
If a lack of qualified counsellors is the problem: then I suggest you fund more of them. Would you advocate funding Chaplains with a first aid course to fill a gap in brain surgeon skills? Absolutely not. Would you fund Chaplains that know how to turn on a laptop if you found the NBN’s technical staff hiring was a bit hard to find? No. So why risk it with our children.

Religion less and less relevant to more and more people
At a time when church attendance is as low as it has ever been and dropping, when “No Religion” is the fastest growing category and when protecting secular institutions is of paramount importance for a society based concepts of not only on freedom of religion but freedom of religion: why on Earth are you trying to buy votes from religious fundamentalists like the Australian Christian Lobby.

Vocal religious lobby groups protecting their taxpayer handouts
I’m sure your inbox is under assault from a lobbying effort by Scripture Union Qld Chaplains that you for some strange reason decided to give another $222m to in the last budget.

Money wasted
I’d point out that the money could have been spent on many more useful things, like qualified counsellors or more teachers in public schools for instance. Or just general increase in public education funding (as a large chunk of the money for chaplains is going to fund proselytising in private religious schools for some reason.. making it yet another drain on the public purse to fund private education)..

No ability to opt out
You have given parents no opportunity to opt out and the NSCP Chaplains are proselytising by stealth in a number of documented cases (most recently on the 730 report). If there have not been widespread complaints: it is likely because (as I found) complaints go missing (e.g. the official NSCP complaint inbox lost one of mine and Scripture Union Qld didn’t bother answering a question about a predatory chaplain that they had hired who appeared to be grooming a child).

Ban chaplains from schools
This program needs to stop. You need to listen to the people saying the program is not suitable for our schools and not let their voices be drowned out by religious lobby groups who already send their kids to private religious schools.
Let the schools spend the money on real counsellors and real staff not these missionaries in schools with a promise to spread the word of Jesus as far as possible.

Please restore our schools to their secular former selves
If people want religious education then they have that option. Where does a parent go if they want an education that does not include the risk of religious indoctrination.
You have followed Howard’s lead and taken away secular free public education for many to replace it with on-site proselytising/amateur counsellor filled schools.

It is a horrible thing to have done, particularly given the dire funding situation for public health and I hope you will come to your senses.

regards,
Nathan Lee

Note: if you would like to donate to the High Court challenge underway you can do so via here or here.

My response:

Dear NRMA,
Your promise to “seek assurances from the Australian Government that the Carbon Tax would not force up the cost of fuel” is absolutely ridiculous! I’m a member and I strongly object to any attempt by the NRMA to campaign against what will be a minuscule rise in petrol prices. You are also ignorant of the current proposal to more than adequately compensate low income earners for any increase caused by such a price on CO2 emissions. For you to ignore this and insist that petrol prices remain the same is attempting to negate any benefit of such a policy.

I didn’t see the survey to take part in it, but rest assured if you do go down this path you will not get another year of membership out of me. I don’t want to belong to and fund any organisation that digs in on climate action, I’ve got a reliable enough vehicle that I don’t need your services.

Where was the NRMA voicing its concern on the gulf war when it resulted in a massive increase in petrol prices? The whole idea of a price on emissions is to drive (no pun intended) people toward less polluting ways.. How does that happen if you succeed and the CO2 price is matched by a reduction in other taxes. The poor/low income earners will be compensated, so you’re going in to bat for people who can well afford any small increase in petrol prices.

How about you lobby the petrol companies as they seem to have forgotten that our dollar is up and that the hikes they jacked up during the last instability in oil prices seem to have stayed high.

The NRMA should be exercising some social conscience and supporting the price on CO2 emissions, something which excessive car use and failure to invest in public transport, electric cars etc.

Arguing that price at the petrol pump is the only thing that matters is the trademark of a sociopath. It’d be like going back a few decades and arguing that removing lead from petrol was too expensive and that kids getting lead poisoning wasn’t an important factor. Transport emissions are a significant slice of the overall green house emissions and you are arguing that they be ignored.

A bit of advice: take your feigned outrage over a tiny rise in petrol prices and instead use your lobbying effort to campaign for charging stations, commitment to electric vehicle research and roll out.

To argue for the govt to make sure it reduces tax by exactly the same amount that the CO2 price puts on is missing the whole point. Yes, it will cost more, that’s so that people reduce their emissions to keep their costs down. Low income earners will be compensated, so you aren’t doing this for poor people who can’t afford it.

Perhaps spend the time to look at what you’re asking and to consider the environment a bit more. You seem to be pushing for some good quality greener outcomes elsewhere, so just try a bit of consistency. The CO2 price/tax/whatever rise is nothing compared to the middle eastern oil price rises.
If we can get on to electric: we can rely on Australian sunshine rather than scamming oil company petrol prices.

regards,
Nathan Lee

I would urge other members to tell NRMA what you think of their attempts to sabotage action on climate change in this way. Reduction in emissions from driving would also reduce a slew of other pollution that our obsession with cars has given us. We need to move to electric cars, widespread public transport (filling existing black hole areas and people getting out of cars) and fund renewable energy. The NRMA demanding petrol be taken out of the equation is not helping any of that.

Rip N Roll campaign snuck this one in. ACL too busy to notice.

So ACL, you just got RipNRolled.

In case you don’t know what the story is about, see this article and this press release. Short story: Australian Christian Lobby organises a bunch of complaints to get an ad taken down for being “offensive”.  Adshel pulls the ad. People find out, get outraged (including me, I wrote to Adshel telling them how spineless they were and that they owed the campaign free advertising for the inconvenience), the backlash causes Adsel to grow a spine and stand up for a safe sex campaign against bronze age morons called the ACL.

The end.

Funnily enough though I have something that clarifies what this organisation means by “evangelise”.

But we aren’t preaching

We’ve had the promise made that ”We are not there to preach to them, we are just there to teach them and give them facts”. I’ve talked to religious people and their definition of “fact” is rather different from normal requirements for proof. e.g. I was discussing with an SRE scripture teacher only last week and he was talking of the “historic fact of Jesus calming a lake”. That’s why they are a poor choice for religious education because speaking with such certainties is indoctrination, not education.

But on with the trip down memory lane to when Access Ministries was CCES and a peek at their core values.

Core values – conversion..  I mean.. evangelising.. Yes. Evangelising!

Access Minstries have a core values page up today which has the following:

ACCESS ministries affirms:
its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ
that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism—a calling of people to repentance and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice

Access Ministries statement of belief today

But if, via the magical powers that be I take a look back in time to when the organisation was called CCES, here’s that same couple of bits from 2001 at least:

The CCES affirms its faith in God, as One-in-Three-Persons, whose redemptive purpose for the world is revealed in the Person of Jesus Christ.
The CCES affirms that the Lord Jesus Christ proclaimed in word and deed the presence of the Kingdom of God through mission and evangelism – a calling of people to repentance (conversion) and a declaration of God’s love in practical ministry to others by enabling reconciliation, peace, wholeness and justice.

CCES's clear definition.

What’s the difference?

I’ll use my nerd skills and show you the complete two bits of text via a “diff” tool and a bit of ugly purple underlining. I’ve added a couple of full stops and changed a dash in order to eliminate the noise, but these are their texts.

Pretty much identical.. Oh, except they edited out a crucial word clarifying what "evangelising" means.

There’s a few changes in how they worded it, an apostrophe change, “her/his” vs “his or her” (I guess couldn’t have women being mentioned first?) and the name change of the organisation.

Oh I almost forgot: there’s the word “conversion” in brackets in the sentence about what evangelism is in order to clarify what this means if people don’t know what the word “evangelise” means. As an aside I love it when religious people throw in stuff in brackets in their texts, like Qur’an 4:34 where by men are informed they can beat their wives which some people realised was bad and inserted (lightly)  as in “(lightly) beat them”.

So when we hear religious types defending the program as being “evangelising rather than proselytising” we now know they mean EXACTLY the same thing: converting souls.. Access Ministries clarified that for us before they did a quick editing job on their core values.

Somewhere between 2001 and today we either had a redefinition of a core value of an organisation or else someone thought it was better if they had another word they could fall back on that meant the same thing, but which was defined on the website with absolute clarity.

Well Access Ministries: we’re on to your stupid word games, thanks for more evidence you’re out to convert all the kids you can like all the other monopoly Christian chaplaincy groups elsewhere in the country. This NSCP program has to stop and secular education needs to be restored.

Here’s some things the recent funding expansion could have been spent on that don’t violate parental right to a free, secular education in our public schools.

Qualified (Real) School Counsellors

Apparently the reason we need chaplains is because we don’t have enough counsellors to go round. Well, in 2010, across Australia, there were 6,743 government schools and as far as I can see from the salary figures for Australian school counsellors that would get us 3083 school counsellors or 2658 senior counsellors.
Let me do the division: that would be around 1 new counsellor to every 2 schools. Just the new counsellors alone would be a 1 to 751 ratio. If you look at the figures for 2008 ratios they’re:

• ACT 1: 850 (1 Assistant Manager, 5 Senior Counsellors, 45 FTE positions for School Counsellors)
• NSW 1 : 1,050 (678 Counsellors 113 DGOs 1 PEOs ie 1 per region across the state)
• NT: 1:2500 when all positions are full  (19 School Counsellors, 2 Senior. School Psychologists, 8 School Psychologists – however, rarely are all positions filled)
• Qld: 1:1,300 in secondary schools (about 350 combined GO and SGO positions)
• SA: 1:3779 for GO,  1:1944 for ECP (GO – 43.4 FTE in the field in 2008, with 3.1 FTE in specialist positions. ECP – 8.9 FTE in the field)
• Tas: 1 :1,800 (36 school psychologists, 8 senior school psychologists)
• WA: 1:1200 to 1:2000
• VIC: no data.

So you can see that those numbers are all blown out of the water (in a good way) if the money had gone to that. Of course the money could go toward the Northern Territory’s problem with hiring staff or to address the states with most urgent need. Or, hell, it could just go to paying the existing ones better pay so more staff are easily found and retained. For a government supposedly concerned about mental health it would surely make sense to hire qualified counsellors with that money rather than preachers who are only really there for a small percentage of the kids who are genuinely religious enough to need to talk to a religious ear.. and even then: only for certain types of advice (e.g. “I think I like my best friend in a sexual way” might not go down too well with an evangelist who thinks gays are sinful or unnatural).

Teachers

Despite Access Ministries actively trying to turn kids against teachers and toward Chaplains via propaganda teachers are the lifeblood of the school and are the real educators.

Teacher ratios in public schools are a problem thanks to the decade or so of the Liberal government under Howard systematically dismantling public education in favour of private education. You remember that right? Back when Abbott was just a RU486 hoarding health minister who couldn’t separate his faith from his ministerial responsibility.

Anyhow, $222m of wasted chaplaincy money could pay for 2220 teachers on a pretty healthy old $100k a year. Or let’s say we pay for a bunch of teachers on $70k, that would get public schools an extra 3,171 teachers.

As of 2010′s ABS figures there are 183,725 teachers.

So we could give them all a $1200 bonus for putting up with the less than desirable funding arrangement that neglects them in favour of funding for extra indoor swimming pools for private schools.

Renewable Energy for Schools

I’ve talked in the past about my view that government buildings should all have solar installations on the roof.

Divided amongst all the schools you could prepare a “renewable energy for schools” programme which would be a lump sum payment of $33k to purchase solar panels for the rooftops of the new school halls. This would help in many ways: it would reduce the electricity bill.

Solar panels could be on school halls

According to Origin energy’s FAQ a 1.5kW system starts at $4k. So let’s say $1k worth of extra cost. So every school could be a 9-10kW solar installation.

So that’s 6743x10kW = 67430kW = 6.7 MW distributed power station. Sure the real yield would be lower that that and you only generate for X hours per day.. But it’s a definite start toward freeing us from fossil fuel dependency.

School Gardens

Instead of learning the “historic fact” from a Christian Chaplain about how all of mankind was forever cursed and kicked out of the garden of Eden each school could get a $33k grant toward creating and maintaining a school garden. The garden could be used to encourage healthy eating or used as an ongoing fund raising device. The added advantage would be education going home via the kids as to what is actually in season, leading to better choices at the super market. With $33K you’d be able to do some serious gardening.

Simply planting some trees might also be a good use of the funding which would offset some of the emissions for heating/cooling the school.

Meals

The money could be used to supply a free apple or orange to every kid in the public school system every day for 20 weeks.

Apples for the students instead! No stories about snakes and gardens needed.

Or perhaps a decent sized fruit salad for half that time.

That’d surely help with the obesity rates and encourage healthy eating.

Books or Technology

Public schools, having to make do with giving away 2/3 of the federal funding to private schools, are lagging behind in adoption of technology like smart boards and computing facilities.  Schools could have $95 worth of extra spend per student on books or technology. So for every 10 students you could fund a laptop. So that’s two extra computers for every classroom. For a small school of 200 students that would be a computer lab. For every 50 students you could have a brand new smart board put into a classroom.

For the price of funding one god fearing chaplain at a school (at $20k of tax dollars) you could give an entire classroom of 20 kids a set of laptops for the year.

If you wanted to splash cash around you could pay a commercial IT consultant, Engineer or Scientist to come in once a week at consulting rates for 20-30 weeks to teach kids about technology rather than bronze age mythology. Which type of inspiration is likely to lead to a career that isn’t complete nonsense and sponging off Govt public schools violating our (supposed to be) secular education system?

Could hire a bunch of roaming consultants to educate the teachers in the technology they have as I know first hand just how little assistance teachers are given. Hell, I was the school technology expert all the way through my schooling from about year 3 onwards (I used to get called up from class in primary school by the high-school teachers to go help fix the clunky Microbee network). Although that was a useful life skill, I now do that with enterprise integration architecture problems.

Disadvantaged students

There are lots of kids in financial, emotional, physical or other disadvantage. I don’t have figures for these, but I guess I’ve touched on the special schools funding.

Let’s assume we can assist students via hiring people at $25/hour (minimum wage is lower, but let’s not be cheap with our chappy cash bonanza). That would pay for 1,184,000 days of paid helper time. So spread over the schools that would be 175 extra days per school, or 35 extra working weeks of hiring someone to come in. So spread that over a few part time people and you’ve got yourself a magic amount of extra assistance with reading, writing etc.

To give you the background: many public schools rely on volunteers currently. Now wouldn’t it be great to pay those people? If we paid $18-20/hour we’d get even more time out of people. Those people would not be there to convert by stealth, preach about nonsense (or in one instance at least of a chaplain grooming children).. No, they’re there to help without preaching.

This would also be a benefit to give people a good part time source of income, particularly mothers/fathers who have their kids at the school and who aren’t working elsewhere.

What else?

What else could the money have gone to that’s school/education related?

Here’s his blog on the matter. He assures his readers that:

The allegations gaining the media coverage are that Chaplains in schools are proselytising. That’s a word you don’t hear very often and it means to try to convert somebody to a religious faith or political doctrine. I can assure our school community that I have never had feedback regarding our Chaplain proselytising.

Perhaps, like any properly performed proselytisation they simply aren’t aware of it and trust that the education department, like when they were at school, is secular and has proper checks and balances in place to prevent it. That clearly isn’t the case if a recent Radio national program on it (transcript here) is anything to go by.

The principal goes on to say:

I am a strong advocate for Chaplaincy and just as strong in my belief that Chaplains must not proselytise or make any judgements about other people’s religious beliefs.

I’m sure he is, he’s had chaplains at the last school and now at this one. Could it be that he is a pathway for Access Ministries into schools? Who needs Chaplains to do the spreading the word if the principals are doing it for Access Ministries?

Regardless, I’ve given him feedback (on the 18th) on an example of proselytising via a comment on his blog (that’s still awaiting moderation on the 21st). How did I find the information? I just looked at a couple of the school newsletters. How many other such things go on without making it into the newsletter?

My reply:

So there’s no proselytising huh? I can straight away show you that there has been religious promotion (in addition to hiring a chaplain):
How about the visit to the school from a Christian Radio station mentioned in the newsletter (1/4/11). Was that organised by the chaplain’s study group member by any chance? Were parents made aware that an evangelical Christian radio station would be coming into the grounds and would be bribing kids with handouts to spread the word of the lord?

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Following an invitation from one of our Year 6 students, Iris Kennedy, 89.9 LightFM came to visit our school on Wednesday morning before school.
There was great excitement as they handed out free ‘Up and Go’ drinks, bags of fresh fruit, single serves of preserved fruit and stickers. Well done Iris and 89.9 LightFM.”

I suppose the stickers were not promoting religion at all huh? And I suppose the student didn’t at all get the idea from sessions with the Chaplain?
Yes, well done 89.9 LightFM: you got an opportunity to preach to all students without parents choosing to opt in.

So how was this announced? Surely it would be made clear that this is a religious group going to be coming in to school grounds.

89.9 LIGHT FM VISIT
Next Monday / Wednesday morning one of Melbourne‘s FM radio stations would like to visit our
school. 89.9 LightFM will be here to hand out stickers and prizes and also do a “live cross” to the school during the breakfast program. They have chosen our school as one of our students emailed them and invited them to come.

No mention of their religious nature so that parents can make an informed decision. No permission slip to participate I’d guess?
So anyhow, that’s just one example of proselytising by stealth that happens when a clear separation isn’t kept between church and the secular education our public system is meant to provide. That’s the problem with having a Chaplain in the first place: there’s no effective way to opt out even if you want to.

So just how many other such things go on. Little visits from church affiliated groups. Courses that are snuck in without mention of their true content? Any of the Hillsong programs by chance (that was reported on the radio as having occurred at other schools)?

I know access ministries runs a course for principals: have you attended that by any chance?

And how exactly do you support the parents who have not opted in to receive Christian Chaplaincy? Or is it automatic opt in and you need to specifically opt out of receiving contact with the Chaplain?

What was the process by which you decided to hire the chaplain in the first place? Was it as thoroughly communicated and considered as the visit from the Christian radio station or one or two vocal Christians? Did you survey the religious makeup of the community? Consider the minority religions?

I’d urge you to reject any future funding and ask for more counsellor time instead. Take the lead from the teachers union and widespread public backlash.

Perhaps a review of the materials the Chaplain is handing out might be in order too. Some material is coming to light that appears to actively try to discourage kids from seeking out help from teachers and only go to chaplains.

The materials I referred to are ones that Mike Stuchbery has brought to light on his blog.

You’ll have to forgive my scepticism that kids (under the instruction of a Chaplain) are entirely self motivated to invite an easy listening evangelical Christian radio station to the school. I guess they were handing out stuff while they sang the message of Jesus to the entire school which is something that the Chaplain has to pretend he isn’t there to do.

Here’s the tweet by the principal, so I’m pretty sure he would have realised the radio was a religious one right?

I suppose a Christian Radio station brought into the school by stealth isn't proselytising?

I wonder whether a Muslim radio station would have been advertised in the newsletter without mentioning the religious affiliation and giving parents a chance to opt in or out (and let’s be clear: people should never have to opt out with religion in public schools, that should be assumed and explicit opt in required for anything).
Proselytising by stealth is what it is called and it has no place in public secular education.

Ban the chaplains and give parents back the secular education they expect.

Bible guarantees! Wow, it must be true then.

Unclear on whether that’s Greenwich mean time or whether it’ll be a rolling event as the day tracks around the globe. So as an Australian I won’t get a chance to repent but those in later time zones will presumably get a bit of lead time, perhaps to arrange for their pets to be looked after by some left behind atheists.

So let’s look on the bright side of the rapture
Let’s assume that all the religious believers are taken up for processing with just the dirty non-believers left behind. Unlike each of those religions, I’ll assume they’re all going to be treated the same: you believe in god/gods then hey – you won the irrational thinking bonus of a lifetime.

Chaplains out of schools
It will get NSCP Chaplains out of our supposed-to-be secular public education system in Australia (so we’d save $222m from the budget recently announced) and stop me from having to complain about the dodgy NSCP mobs (e.g. Scripture Union, Access Ministries) that run this tax funded religious racket.

School time would be more ethical and less bronze age
The only option in SRE time in NSW would be the Primary Ethics course or “non scripture” (I dubbed the trial The first useful scripture lesson in NSW history). So ethics teachers still need to turn up to teach the kiddies next week as they’d be left behind having shunned the nuns. It’s possible other ethics teachers would need to be covered by the Atheists as it is a secular course after all and makes no religious claims.

Public education would no longer be playing second fiddle to private religious schools and would have billions of dollars to spend on much needed facilities, materials, staff and land acquisitions in cramped schools.

Special treatment at all levels. (Image from SMH)

The calls for creationism to be taught in science class would stop.

No more door to door
There’ll be no one knocking on doors in cheap white short sleeve shirts and black ties while you’re trying to get a sleep in. The plus side is that there’ll be little piles of exactly that sort of clothing left around the streets in the post rapture world. Might want to discard their magic Mormon underwear.

Style repellent too.

Peace and quiet
No church bells on Sunday.
No more ridiculously early morning call to prayer in Muslim countries.
No more wailing at the wailing wall.
No more batshitcrazy types picketing funerals.
No more rioting mobs any time a holy book is destroyed.

London's finest out in force.

Discrimination laws will have less exemptions
No religious run businesses/schools left with ridiculous exemptions from the discrimination laws (e.g. allowing the expelling gays or single mothers from schools).

Less nonsense in healthcare
All hospitals left running would offer IVF, abortion services, post rape medical treatment, contraception advice etc. Chemists/pharmacists would all give out medication based on medical need and wouldn’t veto for their own personal reasons.

No nut-cases like this lady picketing female health clinics.

Crazy old bat that pickets a clinic in Surry Hills

No people thinking that scraps of Mary Mackillop miracle placebo items are miraculous. HIV/AIDS treatment and vaccinations could move forward instead of having ridiculous religious leaders impeding the flow of medical aid and advice.

Business and property
The tax system would have a massive amount of money to spend on things as it would stop handouts to the tune of billions to religious organisations.

Sanitarium would have to start paying taxes on its weetbix profits, meaning the tax free status it uses to compete with other cereal companies would evaporate. A slew of other for profit religious owned businesses would no longer be rorting an unfair tax advantage to put normal businesses out of the market.

There’d be lots of prime real estate that could be turned into useful spaces rather than just sitting empty except for an hour a week when a few people get up on a Sunday to do work. The new users of those buildings would pay council rates like everyone else.

Politics and equality would improve a bit
We’d have no more Fred Nile in parliament so someone else would get a chance at the dumbest minister award (plenty of candidates, but Abbott will be gone so the position is open).

Top priorities for Fred.

Gays could get married and have equal rights… you know, like they should have always had.

Child safety
The world’s largest paedophile cover-up group would cease to exist meaning thousands of children would not be exposed to predatory Catholic priests and crimes not covered up then simply shuffled on to new areas. Previous victims could be given free right to loot some of the gold that the Catholic church loves to hoard.

Women’s rights
We’d no longer have clerichead bearded Islamic morons telling us how to beat wives or rape them in a Sharia compliant way and brave Muslim women having to stand up and tell them they’re dickheads.

There's nothing real funny about this, but it makes a point.

Environment and Science
A whole bunch of trees cut down to produce uninspiring religious texts would be saved or used to make more interesting or enlightened books. There’d be slightly more storage room in bedside tables in hotels without the Gideon minions doing their work.

We’d (sadly) lose the learned Cardinal Pell and his climate science denial ways (because as a person who reads the bible he knows better than scientists).

Atheists/Agnostics and secularists can get back to adult matters
And finally Atheists, although they’d have been wrong if the rapture happens would finally get that evidence after thousands of years of waiting.
Secularists will get their separation of church and state they’ve been asking for..

Any others?

I am appalled at the joy our leaders are expressing at the death of Osama bin Laden. There should have been a fair trial and proper court process with life imprisonment (as with our legal system). The death penalty, whether by trial or sniper fire, is something all should oppose, even for the most vile, lest we stoop to their level.

Nathan Lee – Surry Hills

But I guess no amount of writing letters will change that he’s now a martyr and any chance at proper justice (versus revenge) is lost forever.
Not that this whole thing couldn’t have been avoided by Bush simply accepting the offer by the Taliban to turn over bin Laden back in October 2001.

Oh, and it is almost exactly 8 years to the day from the point at which Bush declared “Mission Accomplished”.

Wonder if Trump and the Tea Party Birther nutcases will refuse to believe Osama is dead without the full birth certificate?

UPDATE:
A reply in the next day’s letters may have “jumped the gun” a bit:

I’m not sure if Nathan Lee (Letters, May 3) is kidding, with his insistence that ”There should have been a fair trial and proper court process” of Osama bin Laden. Assuming he is serious, it’s just embarrassing to see how little stomach people seem to have. Does Mr Lee realise that bin Laden would have been firing an automatic weapon at the time he was shot? Perhaps the US soldiers should have read him his rights instead? As far as I’m concerned, a bullet to the head was too kind, and I feel sorry for the fish now feasting on him.

Daniel Lewis Rushcutters Bay

Effective justice depends more on reasoning brains than gut feeling of rage. He was not only unarmed but unless he was naked he was to be shot. Sure doesn’t sound like there was much of a window for him to come out of it alive to be put on trial huh?

This follows on from something I remember from my time in HK whereby duck eggs in China were doctored with a carcinogenic dye.

I’ve mentioned fake food/medicine/supplements from China in my past blog: China may well solve global warming.. Kinda including:

• baby food that looked and smelled ok, but had zero nutritional content. Result: 50 to 60 dead kids who starved to death while the poor parents tried in vain to feed them with milk powder that was pretty much sawdust. (See http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/05/10/health/main616432.shtml )
• Use of a carcinogenic red dye (called sudan red) in duck eggs because the redder the yolk, the more they can sell ‘em for (see http://french.hanban.edu.cn/english/health/189567.htm ) and also in sauce (http://www.china.org.cn/english/health/209080.htm)
• Fake medical supplies (see http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-01/08/content_10625425.htm and  http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/jul/05/china.internationalnews1 )

Food that’s “Made in China” is pretty scary
It really is a worry to be considering sending any food production toward China. The pollution in China is already ridiculous and getting worse. I wouldn’t trust anything coming out of there to not have lots of heavy metals and carcinogenic crap stuffed in it.

Chinese Oysters: Top quality ingredients!

I’ve already given up trying to get smoked oysters (a guilty scoff-a-whole-tin pleasure of mine) because the only ones in the shops now come from China and I don’t fancy eating the “filters of the sea” from one of the most polluted places on Earth.

I won’t spoil it for you, but just watch as she not only demonstrates that the guy’s just plain wrong about the content of the show but also the inconsistency within the guy’s religion. Of all the problems in Pakistan that twit decides to complain about he picks an actress appearing on a TV show as a huge sin.

Islam has bigger issues than an Actress going on TV

But hey, these types pop up all over the world (including Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali from Australia), divinely inspired by the Qu’ran’s unenlightened views on women unfortunately.

It really speaks volumes when I posted this up on facebook a little while back that someone made the comment that “You do realise she’d be killed within a month right….”. I certainly hope not and hope that she inspires the wider community to examine and question the filthy moral lessons people like this cleric put out there.

On the idea that people’s lives get overlooked the older they get reminded me of a story relayed on about my grandfather when he got taken to hospital. The ambulance driver (I think it was) asked him “So, have you ever been in an ambulance before Mr Lee” in one of those “I’m speaking to a simple old person” voices. He used to drive the bloody things!

Anyhow, higher resolution pictures on Tom’s site if you want ‘em and another one or two pics in this series.

No you can’t have pie

The first was in the SMH on the 14th February 2011:

Hrmm.. Notice anything funny with the percentages and pie chart at top.

That’s a funny 52%.. It must be how politicians view most things: majority in favour but treated like a minority during policy making decisions.

Flood is what now? God speech?

The next flood related paper item was this doozy in the conservative opinion journal broadsheet paper The Australian (16th Feb 2011):

Oh, that's why we had a flood. I thought it was just weather.

If that’s how God speaks it explains the smell of the flood waters.

Follow up item
Funny how in the previous post: Trust me, I’m the chaplain I had Danny Allen imply that only people trolling Christians would make such assertions:

In reply to your first little witty caption — did you even bother to click through to Gavin Hudson’s profile? I’m guessing not, otherwise you would have seen that he’s not a chaplain, or even a chaplaincy supporter. He’s an atheist and, like you, is just trolling the SU QLD page to post inflammatory comments.

So Danny, unless the Evangelical Presbyterian Church of Australia puts ads in national newspapers to troll Christians: I think it was a fair comment and I shouldn’t be expected to try and pick out trolling from other Christian commentators because, as comedians like Stephen Colbert prove: it’s almost impossible to tell them apart.