Hello and welcome back, dear listener.
Speaker:Episode 427 of the Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove podcast.
Speaker:I'm Trevor, aka The Iron Fist, coming in loud and clear from regional
Speaker:Queensland, Scott the Velvet Glove.
Speaker:How are you, Scott?
Speaker:Good, thanks, Trevor.
Speaker:G'day, Joe.
Speaker:G'day, Trevor.
Speaker:G'day, listeners.
Speaker:I hope everyone's well.
Speaker:It's all not too bad up here in Mackay actually, it's a lot
Speaker:cooler than what it has been.
Speaker:Yes, a bit cooler down here as well, yes, and rainy.
Speaker:And, still munching on his dinner because of our early start time.
Speaker:Joe the Tech Guy, how are you Joe?
Speaker:Evening all.
Speaker:Right, so, what's on the agenda tonight dear listener?
Speaker:there's no particular, the reason why we're a little
Speaker:bit early is, public holiday.
Speaker:I'm not babysitting as per usual, so I'm not reading
Speaker:bedtime stories to little kids.
Speaker:Grandkids and, a few other things.
Speaker:So that's why we're early.
Speaker:We'll be back to 8 o'clock next week.
Speaker:But, that was the reason why.
Speaker:So, on the agenda, Oh, we're going to start a little bit about Gaza.
Speaker:We're going to then move into this whole intimate partner homicide
Speaker:discussion that's been going on over the last couple of weeks.
Speaker:New statistics have come in.
Speaker:And, short story, You're just an insult, Trevor.
Speaker:You're What's that?
Speaker:I said you're just an incel.
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:A short version of this story, dear listener, is a lot of the media has
Speaker:been talking about a crisis of an increase in domestic homicide, but
Speaker:the statistics just don't show that, and the people writing these articles
Speaker:are looking at those statistics and then more or less ignoring them.
Speaker:I find it quite extraordinary.
Speaker:So, so yeah.
Speaker:Some of you may recall that in recent times, when people who read the Courier
Speaker:Mail and the Boomer Generation were talking about, you know, violence
Speaker:that's increased in Queensland, and I said to them, You realise,
Speaker:of course, that violence is down.
Speaker:I took great delight in that.
Speaker:Now I'm having to say, you realise that, you know, the medium to long term
Speaker:trend on domestic homicide is it's down.
Speaker:I don't get the same delight in saying it because It's not like, I'm
Speaker:poking fun at boomers in the Korean Mail, but it's still the hard truth.
Speaker:But anyway, that's, that's my fate, dear listener.
Speaker:I can't help myself.
Speaker:I have to do this.
Speaker:It's probably good news, though.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But, you know, that's not what people want to hear sometimes.
Speaker:They want to hear something that confirms Some thinking that they already had.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we know that on the left, Joe, that if you are on the left and
Speaker:you disagree with the left, nobody there is particularly forgiving.
Speaker:They'll scrub you.
Speaker:So, yeah, so that's where we're heading on this episode.
Speaker:But before we get there, let's talk about, I'm going to put a, well, it's not really
Speaker:so much as a, what am I grateful for?
Speaker:But, Flu Tracking.
Speaker:I've been doing this for years and years, ever since Craig mentioned it.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Well, Deep Throat mentioned it on the
Speaker:podcast, and that's when I started.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So, I'll put a link in the show notes, dear listener, and head
Speaker:over to Flu Tracking and sign up.
Speaker:Basically, they send you an email once a week.
Speaker:And you just quickly, click some boxes as to whether you're suffering
Speaker:flu symptoms or not, and whether you've had a flu injection or a COVID
Speaker:injection and send it back to them.
Speaker:It takes about 30 seconds and this is vital data for these people
Speaker:and it's a good thing to do.
Speaker:Doesn't cost you anything.
Speaker:Have you
Speaker:had your flu jab yet?
Speaker:No, I haven't.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:I had mine last week.
Speaker:and I was unsure because I had mine in Europe.
Speaker:back in November, and I went through the list, and depending on which one I
Speaker:had, because I'm not sure which one I had in England, the B strains, so it's a
Speaker:quadrivalent, so four different strains.
Speaker:Both the B strains are the ones I had in England, and the A
Speaker:strains, one of them may have been the same as I had in England.
Speaker:So you're repeating, the doses are repeating what
Speaker:you've already had in England?
Speaker:At least for the B strains.
Speaker:So for two of the four, it definitely is, there may be a third as well.
Speaker:So I don't know if it boosts me particularly for those
Speaker:strains, it gives me more.
Speaker:Did you pay particular attention to where they jabbed you in the arm
Speaker:to make sure it was the meaty part?
Speaker:no, I didn't.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Check out a previous episode for why I mentioned that, dear listeners.
Speaker:Yes,
Speaker:because it was the pharmacist that jabbed me.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:I had mine tomorrow or Wednesday or something like that.
Speaker:I've just, it just reminded me this morning while I was doing the flu server.
Speaker:I thought to myself, oh, I better go and get that done.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:I have this problem where I faint when I get needles.
Speaker:Have I mentioned that before?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Yeah, so I can't help myself.
Speaker:Even if you look the other way?
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Yeah, so I have to lie down whenever I get any sort of needle, otherwise I faint.
Speaker:And the local one here, Just as a chair, it doesn't have a bed, so I have to do it
Speaker:somewhere else and it's not as convenient as it could be to get the jab, so,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Do you remember the, when the COVID vaccine was first rolled out, there
Speaker:was a nurse who on live TV fainted?
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So she had a, it was a vagus nerve reaction and she gets
Speaker:it for all the vaccines.
Speaker:But of course this happened on live TV and she just collapsed in front of everybody.
Speaker:And the rumours that were going around about, oh, you know, you
Speaker:see how bad these vaccines are.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So yeah, with COVID, you know, you'd had your big queues lined
Speaker:up, especially the first couple.
Speaker:Then I would be the one saying, is there a special room here where I can lie down?
Speaker:And off I'd go into the special room.
Speaker:But look, dear listener, there's chapters, you can, look at timestamps, scoot
Speaker:through this private experience that I'm about to relay if you're not interested,
Speaker:but I at one point was having an atrial fibrillation, which is where your heart
Speaker:rhythm is out of kilter, and the atrial is fibrillating rather than pumping properly.
Speaker:Anyway, I was in overnight in hospital.
Speaker:And I was in the cardiac ward at the Wesley Hospital, hooked up to
Speaker:all sorts of, stuff, monitoring my heart and vital signs.
Speaker:And they were about to, later that morning, hit me with the
Speaker:paddles to, you know, get the heart, shock it back into rhythm.
Speaker:And I had a drip in my arm and the drip, the vein had started to close and the
Speaker:drip was pumping into the muscle of the, of my hand, which is really painful.
Speaker:It is pretty painful.
Speaker:I'd said to the nurse, I think this is what's happening, I've had
Speaker:it before, please, you know, do something, and she started flushing
Speaker:the saline solution through.
Speaker:That hurts.
Speaker:And that hurts as well, but I'm in a bed, and I'm sitting upright in a bed,
Speaker:And she's mucking around, flushing the saline through the drip, and my mind says,
Speaker:Trevor, this is like getting a needle.
Speaker:You need to faint.
Speaker:And so, I said to her, Oh, I've got to, I've got to lie down, and I'm trying to
Speaker:inch my way into the lower in the bed.
Speaker:And I fainted, and when I woke up, there was, at least six people around the bed.
Speaker:And they said, wow, that was really interesting.
Speaker:it was basically, yeah, all the, alarms and everything had gone off in
Speaker:this cardiac ward because I'd fainted while, under atrial fibrillation
Speaker:and, it was totally involuntary.
Speaker:Just, nothing I can do about it.
Speaker:Anyway, there's a little diversion for you.
Speaker:Right,
Speaker:let's talk about Do you want to know what I'm grateful for?
Speaker:Oh yeah, Scott, go ahead.
Speaker:I'm grateful for the Catholic Church, because I'm going to be working for them.
Speaker:As of in a fortnight's time, dear listener, I'm going to be the finance
Speaker:manager up at a local Catholic high school, and I will no doubt Be
Speaker:able to, but also be unwilling to reveal any of the secrets of what
Speaker:happens to the government's money.
Speaker:Yes, I'd like to keep that secret and not tell anyone.
Speaker:I will keep it
Speaker:secret, I won't be telling anyone anything, but anyway, if you can see me
Speaker:Yeah, it'll be an interesting experience.
Speaker:Oh, it will be for sure.
Speaker:You know?
Speaker:Very good.
Speaker:Good luck with that one, Scott.
Speaker:I do.
Speaker:Thank you very much.
Speaker:Remember talking to a project manager who worked for Catholic Cha Catholic.
Speaker:It was a religious charity.
Speaker:I can't remember which one.
Speaker:And they were saying that in their risk analysis of every project
Speaker:they had to put God's prayers not being answered as a risk.
Speaker:Wow.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:. Well, the Better Half works for a, Anglican charity right now.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:He hates it.
Speaker:He doesn't like it at all.
Speaker:And, he says one of the things he's getting sick of is having welcome to
Speaker:countries and all that type of thing.
Speaker:Because they appear to have gone very much down the, You know, look
Speaker:at us, we're so woke type of thing.
Speaker:So they have welcome to countries at everything that they do.
Speaker:And the, they were making a big deal because the executive suite were going out
Speaker:to, Oh, not Murgon, but anyway, a remote indigenous settlement in Queensland.
Speaker:Now we're going out there to have a look.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:Like he said, he said, why?
Speaker:And the basic response was, oh, because it's there.
Speaker:So, you know.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Did you see the Qantas thing?
Speaker:What
Speaker:Qantas
Speaker:thing?
Speaker:Oh, somebody had scribbled, that was basically, on the safety video,
Speaker:that was a welcome to country.
Speaker:And somebody had scribbled on, on the back of the in flight magazine
Speaker:or something in a seat pocket.
Speaker:Basically, keep your attitude to yourself.
Speaker:We don't care.
Speaker:and there was a big article about how dare they, you know, this racist attitude
Speaker:of people saying we don't care about.
Speaker:Somebody's scribbling something on the back of a pamphlet in an aeroplane seat.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Made the news.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Meanwhile, 40, 000 people dying in Gaza.
Speaker:Because it doesn't make
Speaker:the news.
Speaker:And
Speaker:it just doesn't make the news.
Speaker:And that's why we are leading with Gaza stories on this
Speaker:episode, because it's true.
Speaker:It just doesn't get any, it just keeps getting worse and worse, and how
Speaker:often can you say it sort of thing.
Speaker:But it should be, the first five minutes of every news bulletin should be images
Speaker:from Gaza of what's going on there.
Speaker:Because it's the most incredible thing, yet it just gets glossed over and
Speaker:doesn't get mentioned in the media much, compared to what it should, and even,
Speaker:you know, amongst people just talking.
Speaker:So.
Speaker:there was an article, John Mandu blog, by Sorsan Medina, who formerly
Speaker:was head of television for SBS.
Speaker:And, I think so she wrote some things that sort of struck with me.
Speaker:So, I'm just going to read a couple of excerpts from her article.
Speaker:So, here we go.
Speaker:Friends.
Speaker:With whom for years I've gone to watch movies about the Holocaust, and to whom
Speaker:I have lent books on the suffering of Jews in Nazi Germany and elsewhere.
Speaker:Do not say a word about Gaza, and their indifference cuts me deeply.
Speaker:One says she tries to avoid politics.
Speaker:Avoid politics?
Speaker:I wonder how she would feel if it was Belfast that was being bombed.
Speaker:I remember, I remember her anger at the suffering of Ukrainians, and
Speaker:I think, children of a lesser god.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:Over 14, 000 children have been killed in Gaza by Israel's bombs and snipers,
Speaker:and others are buried under the rubble.
Speaker:The surviving children suffer unspeakable horrors.
Speaker:14, 000 children murdered.
Speaker:How can people treat this as a mere statistic?
Speaker:How can they read it and move on?
Speaker:How can they avert their gaze?
Speaker:I try to imagine the pain of the Palestinians witnessing the suffering
Speaker:of their traumatised children.
Speaker:The sense of being utterly helpless to protect their
Speaker:children must be overwhelming.
Speaker:There have been so many distressing images from Gaza.
Speaker:One image lives in my mind, a little girl rushing behind the body of her
Speaker:dead mother, weeping and beseeching her in Arabic to, get up mother, get up.
Speaker:I wade through the words of politicians about the conflict and think of
Speaker:this little girl, And all the other children whose world has fallen apart.
Speaker:I see the headlines in the mainstream media and I am dumbfounded.
Speaker:How can they lead with trivialities?
Speaker:Until the slaughter in Gaza stops, shouldn't the headlines
Speaker:scream about it daily?
Speaker:I watch the confected exasperation of Biden and I think, you
Speaker:can stop this apocalypse now.
Speaker:I read our politicians words and watch their inaction and mourn the
Speaker:loss of Australia's sovereignty.
Speaker:And I weep for the children of Gaza, children who are wondering
Speaker:whether they will be alive tomorrow instead of thinking, when
Speaker:I grow up, I would like to be.
Speaker:Children who are searching for wood so mumma can make a fire
Speaker:when they should be at school.
Speaker:Children who want their legs back.
Speaker:I remember seeing a video, dear listener, with this little girl just
Speaker:saying, just crying I want my legs back.
Speaker:There's just such a downplaying of this tragedy and people just
Speaker:don't get it, I don't think.
Speaker:I don't think people get the suffering.
Speaker:I don't understand.
Speaker:Maybe, maybe people just haven't experienced enough.
Speaker:Like, maybe people haven't been to enough funerals or kids.
Speaker:Like, and haven't seen, you know, we don't see deceased bodies.
Speaker:We just, it's all in a box, we don't see it.
Speaker:old people are shuffled off to nursing homes, we don't see the deceased body.
Speaker:We, maybe we struggle to put ourselves in that position.
Speaker:I was speaking to a guy, he's a good friend, he's a good friend.
Speaker:The guy has got an absolute heart of gold.
Speaker:He has done so much for, the disabled community, it's ridiculous.
Speaker:Tens of millions of dollars of benefits to them, like volunteer work, setting up
Speaker:stuff, like, unbelievable heart of gold.
Speaker:And, you know, we sat down for a coffee and we were talking about
Speaker:the state of the world and he said, you know, Values today, Trevor.
Speaker:People don't have values, you know.
Speaker:Why can't we just, it's obvious what's good and evil.
Speaker:And then as we were talking, he's basically supporting what Israel had done.
Speaker:I'm thinking, you're kidding me, mate.
Speaker:Like, you're kidding me.
Speaker:You can't possibly be supporting what Israel has done.
Speaker:And he said, well, what else were they to do?
Speaker:What else were they, how else would they respond to October 7th?
Speaker:And I said, mate, I don't have the answers.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:But I know that this was not the answer.
Speaker:Killing all these people is not the answer.
Speaker:They should
Speaker:not have continued any longer after the first
Speaker:three days.
Speaker:No, I mean, the Israel of old would have targeted the leaders and taken them out.
Speaker:Very, very obviously, as a message to say, pick on us and we'll pick on you.
Speaker:But generally it wasn't, it wasn't the foot soldiers.
Speaker:It wasn't the people.
Speaker:It was the leadership
Speaker:that was actually
Speaker:shot.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Which I, I, I don't have a real problem with, you know, they are talking
Speaker:about what the latest deal is, they're going to release 33 Israeli hostages
Speaker:in exchange for 300 Palestinians.
Speaker:I don't know who the 300 Palestinians are in Jewish prisons and that sort of stuff
Speaker:that they're talking about releasing.
Speaker:There is one bloke whose name escapes me that they reckon could be the next leader
Speaker:of the, of the Palestinian Authority.
Speaker:But, I couldn't tell you what his name is, but they're talking
Speaker:about him being on the, on the most highly want to release list.
Speaker:So, I don't know whether or not, I don't know whether or not they're gonna
Speaker:get him out with only 33 hostages, because they've still got 133 to go.
Speaker:So, they did see there's a Jewish family in Israel who are suing them.
Speaker:That really doesn't surprise me.
Speaker:Because they have evidence That the Jewish government turned down
Speaker:the chance to negotiate with the
Speaker:hostages.
Speaker:That really doesn't surprise me.
Speaker:Because
Speaker:Netanyahu
Speaker:wants to continue this war as long as possible because while the war
Speaker:is continuing, he remains in office.
Speaker:If he actually has to face the people, he will be thrown out on his arse.
Speaker:I was hearing Israelis, he's got a very, very high approval rating.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:There is nobody to challenge him.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I've heard the opposite.
Speaker:I've sort of heard a lot.
Speaker:I've read that, I've read that if a poll was held today, that there's the
Speaker:possibility the Israeli Labor Party could form government in its own right, which is
Speaker:a big turnaround for the entire country.
Speaker:Mm hmm.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Maybe we will look at that next week, see what his popularity rating is.
Speaker:I also heard that he needed the war to continue to stay
Speaker:out of jail for some reason.
Speaker:Yeah,
Speaker:it's exactly because he's facing, he's facing, I can't
Speaker:remember what the charges were.
Speaker:I had listened to a podcast the other day, they actually
Speaker:explained what the charges were.
Speaker:He's facing charges based on Trying to buy a positive media media campaign
Speaker:and everything for him for his government He was actually I can't
Speaker:remember what the charge was called.
Speaker:It was called something well, we'll call it buying influence, but it wasn't that
Speaker:and he was buying the influence of a popular Jewish newspaper in Israel and he
Speaker:was He said to them he said look if you stop all the negative press on me You I
Speaker:will give you ABC legislation, and that's, they've got him, they've got him, they've
Speaker:got him recorded on a telephone with that.
Speaker:So, that's where the whole case is, that if they can get him before the
Speaker:courts and that sort of stuff, they're actually gonna do time behind bars.
Speaker:I was gonna say, you know, this is He just needed a Murdoch, didn't he?
Speaker:Sorry?
Speaker:He just needed a Murdoch.
Speaker:Yeah, I know.
Speaker:Well, he's probably got them, but the point is, while the war is continuing,
Speaker:all that's on hold, I guess, until Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, see, this is the whole point.
Speaker:Like, you know, I don't know if it's official, but they're just saying
Speaker:that they can't go to a poll because the war was continuing, and, you
Speaker:know, he's got right wing elements in his government that want the
Speaker:invasion of Rafa to happen tomorrow.
Speaker:And it's just absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker:It's already happening.
Speaker:They've started bombing already.
Speaker:Oh, have they?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So they haven't given them very much time to get out of the place, have
Speaker:they?
Speaker:Nowhere to go anyway.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:Chronic Famine
Speaker:in the North and, there's nowhere to go.
Speaker:Well, I was listening to something that, I don't know, but there was
Speaker:something that, A Jewish, an Israeli general was actually saying to somebody
Speaker:or other that he was interviewing him and he said that we've, they could
Speaker:move five kilometers to the north and then they'd be out of harm's way.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:But there's nothing left of the rest, the whole
Speaker:Into the rubble.
Speaker:The whole
Speaker:strip has been bombed to hell and back.
Speaker:There is nothing left.
Speaker:Whatever an Israeli official says, I just wouldn't believe any of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Just, you just can't believe anything they've got to say.
Speaker:So, you
Speaker:know, that's exactly what I was thinking at the time.
Speaker:I just thought to myself, where are they going to go?
Speaker:And he says, Oh, they can move five kilometers north.
Speaker:And I thought, well, there's probably nothing left there.
Speaker:Yeah, I don't think there is.
Speaker:Now, what are Australians views currently on the Israelis,
Speaker:Israel's military action in Gaza?
Speaker:There was an essential poll asking Australians, views on
Speaker:Israel's military action in Gaza.
Speaker:And I'll focus on the one statistic which was, Israel is justified in
Speaker:continuing its military action.
Speaker:That was one option.
Speaker:The other was, Israel should agree to a temporary ceasefire.
Speaker:There was also, Israel should permanently withdraw, and unsure.
Speaker:Let's just look at the one that says, Israel is justified in
Speaker:continuing its military action.
Speaker:Overall, in April, 19 percent of Australians thought
Speaker:that, previously it was 18%.
Speaker:So, slightly more are in favour of saying Israel's justified in continuing.
Speaker:Break it down into gender.
Speaker:Males.
Speaker:27 percent of Australian males in this survey said Israel is justified
Speaker:compared to 13 percent female.
Speaker:Big difference there.
Speaker:Age.
Speaker:In the 18 34
Speaker:category, only 10 percent think Israel is justified.
Speaker:In the 35 54 age group, only 10 percent think Israel is justified.
Speaker:Thank you.
Speaker:In the 55 plus boomer category, 35 percent.
Speaker:I think Israel is justified.
Speaker:How does our society get so divided along these lines all the time about everything?
Speaker:Whether it's tax, drugs, free speech, environment, how, how do
Speaker:we just get so divided on, well.
Speaker:Male, female, age.
Speaker:The Boomers are more likely to be religious, and they've
Speaker:forgotten the thousands of years of persecution of the Jews.
Speaker:Now the Jews are our friends, and we all hate Muslims.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, but, the Boomers were also the group of people that took to the
Speaker:streets to oppose the Vietnam War.
Speaker:You know, there were also the, there were also the Flower Power and everything
Speaker:like that, they used to smoke dope.
Speaker:Yeah, you're right, Scott.
Speaker:Sorry?
Speaker:You're right.
Speaker:And now they're the group saying, Israel's justified in continuing.
Speaker:No, no, it's one of those things, I don't understand that because I would
Speaker:have thought that if you asked a boomer, is this, was Australia justified in
Speaker:joining the Vietnam War, I reckon you get 90 percent of them would say no.
Speaker:Hmm.
Speaker:But Ask a question about the Israeli government's conduct in Gaza, they'd
Speaker:say, oh yes, it's totally justified.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:God knows why.
Speaker:It's depressing.
Speaker:It is depressing.
Speaker:according to Voting Intention, 11 percent of Labor voters think Israel is justified.
Speaker:The percentage of Green voters is so small I didn't even write the percentage.
Speaker:It looks like it might be about 4 percent or 3.
Speaker:Coalition voters, 32%.
Speaker:I think Israel's justified.
Speaker:Independent or other party, 22%.
Speaker:So, big difference there.
Speaker:Labor, 11%.
Speaker:Greens, 3 or 4.
Speaker:Coalition, 32.
Speaker:And the sort of Pauline Hanson and other parties, 22.
Speaker:Big difference there.
Speaker:Boy, it's, you know, you can just, we've said this before, you can ask people a
Speaker:few key questions that have seemingly nothing to do with each other, and if
Speaker:people fall into line on them you can almost, you know, be guaranteed of knowing
Speaker:what their voting intention is, you know?
Speaker:Are you in favour of nuclear power?
Speaker:Are you, you know, unsure whether climate change is man made?
Speaker:do you think there's too much woke teaching at universities?
Speaker:a range of just sort of seemingly things like this Gaza and Israel and
Speaker:And you'll quickly understand where the people fall into, where they fall
Speaker:into line in terms of voting intention.
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:What are you doing?
Speaker:One other thing in this poll was they asked people to rank sources
Speaker:of energy in terms of the most expensive to the least expensive.
Speaker:And People put down renewables as the most expensive, nuclear as There was
Speaker:some valid, debate as to expensive.
Speaker:What do you mean by expensive?
Speaker:Yeah, I was going to get to that, Joe.
Speaker:Okay.
Speaker:So, so, so basically if you sort of quickly read it, it'll say,
Speaker:well, people think renewables, most people think renewables are the most
Speaker:expensive, but nuclear is second and fossil fuels are the cheapest.
Speaker:but the actual question from essential was, please rank the following sources of
Speaker:energy in terms of total cost, including infrastructure and household price.
Speaker:And Ian McAuley in his weekly sort of summary article that appears in
Speaker:the John Minidoo blog said it was just a terrible, a terrible question
Speaker:in terms of the wording of it.
Speaker:So it mixes up cost.
Speaker:and Price, and you've got confusion of whether we're talking short
Speaker:term or long term as well.
Speaker:So, what he says is, it confuses cost and price even more seriously
Speaker:because it does not ask whether it refers to short run or long run costs
Speaker:and what people understand by cost.
Speaker:In the short run, the lowest cost, ignoring externalities, is to
Speaker:flog the last few kilowatts out of our ancient coal fired stations.
Speaker:In the medium to long run, renewables are by far the cheapest.
Speaker:followed by fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Speaker:So an example, dear listener of lies, damn lies and statistics.
Speaker:And that's a pretty badly worded question leading to a
Speaker:misleading statistic, I think.
Speaker:and we're going to be dealing a lot with statistics in this episode,
Speaker:dear listener, and we spent a lot of time on statistics with COVID.
Speaker:Guys, you might remember.
Speaker:Yeah, we did.
Speaker:And I think that's where you said if you torture the data long
Speaker:enough it'll confess to anything.
Speaker:That's the one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And people who, who trust models have never been involved in constructing a
Speaker:model because they don't realise all the assumptions that are built in.
Speaker:And, there was a few good quotes in there.
Speaker:You know, often people struggle.
Speaker:This is what I think.
Speaker:Was had a problem with, in that where you had multiple factors interplaying, some
Speaker:people struggle to keep all the balls in the air and understand that there's a
Speaker:range of different influences all playing a part and some people look for a simple,
Speaker:easy solution that maybe isn't there.
Speaker:I think you need to be careful with models because, yes, models are based on guess
Speaker:its, but a lot of them have been compared against reality and they have been useful.
Speaker:They've made predictions that track with the past, and they make predictions for
Speaker:the future that track in the short term.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's the best you can hope for with a model.
Speaker:So, you know, take weather forecasting, which is incredibly chaotic, but 50
Speaker:years ago, your three day forecast was, at best a guess, yeah, it was 50 50
Speaker:whether it was going to be accurate.
Speaker:And now we're accurate out to five days.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Once you get much past five days, it really is still a
Speaker:guess, because it's so chaotic.
Speaker:There are so many variables.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yep.
Speaker:And when you look at something like predictions on climate change Pretty
Speaker:much what was predicted 30 years ago has come to pass, if you're looking at
Speaker:the International Committee on Climate Change, whatever that one's called.
Speaker:Yeah, there's a least, least case, worst case, and then a medium, and
Speaker:I think it's tracked medium so far.
Speaker:Yes, and, you know, sceptics will say, You know, they don't know what they're doing
Speaker:because they can't predict these things.
Speaker:Well, in fact, the main authoritative predictor of that has been pretty much
Speaker:spot on, from what they said 30 years ago.
Speaker:So, so modelings, of course, look into the future and try and
Speaker:guess what's going to happen.
Speaker:When it comes to just comparing statistics, what we also discovered
Speaker:in COVID, you know, we were comparing different countries and their experience.
Speaker:And the problem was, it was hard to compare apples with apples.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And Australia being an isolated country, with a shut border, was an entirely
Speaker:different proposition to, you know, a European landlocked country surrounded
Speaker:by others, where, it was, you really n People try to compare statistics when they
Speaker:were not comparing apples with apples.
Speaker:So, one of the faults in the current discussion about intimate partner
Speaker:violence, it's getting confused with gender violence, and the statistic
Speaker:that was trotted out with sort of 26 people killed this year, included five
Speaker:people from the Bondi incident, and that was not an intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:It wasn't even an acquaintance homicide, but the mixing up of that number in
Speaker:the same discussion as intimate partner homicide just gives me the shits because
Speaker:you've got to be really careful if you're going to swap between the two and
Speaker:make it clear that's what you're doing.
Speaker:But in a lot of the articles that I've read in the Guardian and other
Speaker:places, They will use that figure of 26 at the same time as they're talking
Speaker:about intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:And it's not part of that statistic.
Speaker:And these people are just not careful enough in, in what they're looking at.
Speaker:So somebody gonna say something then, Scott?
Speaker:Were you about to or not?
Speaker:I'll just keep going.
Speaker:So, dear listener, sort of violence and stuff.
Speaker:Previously.
Speaker:We've looked at the Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey,
Speaker:which was the most accurate measure of self reported experiences of all forms
Speaker:of personal violence in Australia.
Speaker:You might remember me talking about that one, describing violence has
Speaker:basically decreased over the last decades, except for, cyber crime.
Speaker:And we were talking about, uh you know, other issues with that.
Speaker:Then last week we looked at the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare and
Speaker:the statistics that came out of that.
Speaker:But now we have, dear listener, recently, and the problem with that last one that
Speaker:we talked about last week, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, I said at
Speaker:the time it was really statistics related to, 2020, 2021, around about that period.
Speaker:It was sort of about three years old.
Speaker:That was sort of the most recent stuff that they had.
Speaker:And we were trying to ascertain whether, how much of it was male on
Speaker:male partner violence, and did that include gay couples, and had all
Speaker:that discussion, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker:Well now we've got, 2022, 2023 figures.
Speaker:That's as current as you can get for a full financial year.
Speaker:This is Homicide in Australia, a statistical report from the
Speaker:Australian Institute of Criminology, part of the Australian Government.
Speaker:So we're going to be looking at their statistics.
Speaker:The National Homicide Monitoring Program is Australia's only
Speaker:national data collection on homicide incidents, victims and offenders.
Speaker:So the NHMP holds data on all homicide incidents, victims and
Speaker:offenders recorded by state and territory police since 1989 1990.
Speaker:So the last 30 years.
Speaker:That sounds pretty good, guys.
Speaker:Sounds authoritative.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Remember last week?
Speaker:There was an article in The Age where it was said, The Facebook page,
Speaker:Counting Dead Women Australia, which is maintained by volunteers using verified
Speaker:police reports of women's homicides, is recognised as the most accurate
Speaker:tally of women killed by violence.
Speaker:And I said at the time, Doubt that that's going to be the case, that a Facebook
Speaker:page, I think we can say that the National Homicide Monitoring Program is going
Speaker:to be more authoritative than Counting Dead Women Australia Facebook page.
Speaker:No offence, but really, what sort of journalist writes that without checking?
Speaker:Is there some other government body counting homicides?
Speaker:One would have thought so.
Speaker:Yes, it just sounded to me highly suspicious.
Speaker:Anyway, so homicide incidents are classified as domestic,
Speaker:acquaintance or stranger homicides.
Speaker:And in that financial year, 1st of July 22 to 23, there
Speaker:were 232 incidents of homicide.
Speaker:That's general homicide in Australia, which was an increase of 14 homicides
Speaker:from the previous year, but is the third lowest homicide rate recorded since 1989.
Speaker:And overall, the homicide incident rate has halved so.
Speaker:Overall homicide, including domestic acquaintance and stranger
Speaker:homicides, falling significantly, despite a uptick of 14 in that
Speaker:financial year, but a downward trend.
Speaker:Now, moving on to intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:So for 2022 2023, there were 38 incidents of intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:And that was half of all domestic homicide.
Speaker:So remember, domestic homicide might include siblings, grandparents,
Speaker:you know, extended family or whatever, but not intimate partner.
Speaker:So intimate partner was half of the domestic homicide and 16
Speaker:percent of all homicide incidents.
Speaker:So on this intimate partner homicide, 89 percent were perpetrated against
Speaker:female victims, And, that was an increase of eight from the previous year.
Speaker:But the number of incidents is still lower than the average number of incidents
Speaker:recorded in the previous 10 years.
Speaker:And dear listener, there is a chart, which I'm going to put on the screen right now.
Speaker:And that, Joe, how do we make that bigger?
Speaker:anyway, The top line is, female victims.
Speaker:And you can see a significantly strong downward trend.
Speaker:And okay, in the last 12 months there is an uptick.
Speaker:But the uptick is one of the smaller upticks in that graph.
Speaker:Like, the thing moves in a jagged line in a steady downward progression.
Speaker:And it's not unusual for a much bigger increase to be followed
Speaker:by a much bigger decrease.
Speaker:And if you're looking at this sort of data, where the numbers are in the
Speaker:scheme of things relatively small, you're not going to get a flat line.
Speaker:you're going to get a jagged line of little ups and downs along the way.
Speaker:And what you need to look at is, well, what is the overall trend?
Speaker:And the overall trend is that intimate partner homicide with female victims,
Speaker:is, is decreasing significantly and has decreased significantly.
Speaker:Has halved in 30
Speaker:years.
Speaker:Has
Speaker:halved in 30 years.
Speaker:So, if you were reporting about the state of the world and intimate partner
Speaker:homicide with female victims, and you're, and you're declaring a crisis,
Speaker:and you're aware of these figures And you're not putting it into the context
Speaker:of, of a significant long term trend.
Speaker:You're really being, you're really just misrepresenting what's going on.
Speaker:Like they're talking now about, well, what are we going to do?
Speaker:What are we going to do to improve the situation?
Speaker:If I came up with a range of options and I said, well, I suggest
Speaker:that we do A, B, C, D and E.
Speaker:And I guarantee you that over the next 30 years, you're going to get a
Speaker:trend line that looks a bit like this.
Speaker:People would say, fantastic, let's implement that, let's implement
Speaker:whatever you've suggested.
Speaker:If you, if you can get that trend line, that's a good
Speaker:result, is what people would say.
Speaker:And,
Speaker:if, if,
Speaker:if we're looking at, sorry, let me just finish this idea, Scott, is, you
Speaker:know, if, if we've got a, a trend line that's actually in the right direction.
Speaker:And we change things, well we might actually make things worse.
Speaker:Like, obviously, you've got to be, people would not withdraw programs,
Speaker:you wouldn't think, they would just add more programs, so it wouldn't really be
Speaker:worse, but, the whole idea of not looking at that trend line and not going, you
Speaker:know what, some of what we're doing is actually right, and if it keeps going
Speaker:in this way, well we're heading to zero, we'll never get there, but the trend
Speaker:that's shown Actually a good trend.
Speaker:Sorry, Scott, go on.
Speaker:No, I was just going to point out to the dear listener, those numbers there
Speaker:are based on a per 100, 000 population.
Speaker:So the population of Australia has gone up significantly since it started the count.
Speaker:So you would expect that there would be some downward numbers.
Speaker:What I'd be interested to see is if you got the raw data and that sort of stuff,
Speaker:if you had the raw numbers that made that up, I'd be interested to see that.
Speaker:But I do take your point.
Speaker:As a per 100, 000 population, it's obviously on the way down.
Speaker:Yeah, so, And,
Speaker:you know, it's one of those things, like, if you really wanted to get technical
Speaker:about it, you can see that the spike in the women's deaths also led to a spike
Speaker:in the total death, where there wasn't, there didn't appear to be the, same
Speaker:sort of movement in the male deaths.
Speaker:Yeah, so just, finishing off with this report, most victims of
Speaker:homicide, that's general homicide in Australia, are male, 65 percent, yeah.
Speaker:There will of course be people pointing out that most of that is.
Speaker:Male victim, male offender.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:However, the outlier is filicide.
Speaker:Murdering your children.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Where two thirds of the offenders are women.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Oh,
Speaker:really?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:the other one in here was, victims of homicide by sex of primary offender.
Speaker:So, this was not necessarily intimate partner, but it
Speaker:was just homicide generally.
Speaker:And.
Speaker:So for male offenders, there was 131 male victims and 60 female victims.
Speaker:For female offenders, there were 21 male victims and 9 female victims.
Speaker:So, males tended to kill more males than females, and females tended
Speaker:to kill more males than females.
Speaker:So, so there was that one there.
Speaker:And, and there was another one here.
Speaker:There was
Speaker:also a significant proportion of offender not identified.
Speaker:Yes, and you might recall we talked about in the gay community, because
Speaker:Scott, you felt that anecdotally, Based on your small sampling.
Speaker:Yeah, and I also, I also said that any, you know, adding
Speaker:anecdotes aren't, aren't data.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:But anyway, it is what it is.
Speaker:But in this financial year where there was 38 intimate partner homicides,
Speaker:so, male offender, female victim 34, female offender, and a male victim four.
Speaker:So that made up to 38.
Speaker:In terms of a male victim and a male offender, zero.
Speaker:So, gay male relationships, Scott.
Speaker:Zero.
Speaker:And female victim, female offender, lesbian relationships.
Speaker:Zero.
Speaker:So
Speaker:we need to be careful though, because gay relationships are a much
Speaker:smaller subset of the population.
Speaker:True.
Speaker:And therefore with numbers like that, you'd expect between
Speaker:zero and one, I would say.
Speaker:You would.
Speaker:And we're talking about one year.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:That we're looking at here.
Speaker:But it's just a matter of interest.
Speaker:I mean, you can't, what?
Speaker:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:It's in line with what, yeah, we're I
Speaker:mentioned this to a friend who said, actually, in the states where there's
Speaker:easier access to gun, the number of female offender, male victim is a lot higher.
Speaker:Ah, true, because they have the ability to overcome the physical disadvantage.
Speaker:Yeah, the ability to shoot them.
Speaker:Yes, interesting, interesting.
Speaker:So, anyway, so this particular report that I've been referring to.
Speaker:came out after the rally that was going on around the country.
Speaker:so maybe people might've not rallied had they known about it.
Speaker:I think that, I think they're always going to rally.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:It's, it's one of those things that it appears to have taken over the zeitgeist.
Speaker:So, you know.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Because, even people who are aware of this study are misrepresenting it, I think.
Speaker:So, here was an article from The Guardian, and the headline of The
Speaker:Guardian was Almost 30 percent spike in rate of Australian women killed by
Speaker:intimate partner last year, data shows.
Speaker:That was the headline.
Speaker:And, now dear listener, as the article goes on, it will continue.
Speaker:Talk about the overall trend being downwards.
Speaker:But as we know from previous episodes and discussions, lots of people just
Speaker:read the headline and nothing else.
Speaker:Or maybe the first paragraph and nothing else.
Speaker:So, it's not a justification to say, oh well the headline was dramatic but
Speaker:they made up for it by providing the detail in the guts of the article.
Speaker:That doesn't cut it.
Speaker:So this article from The Guardian, had the headline, Almost 30 percent
Speaker:spike in rate of women killed by intimate partner last year, data shows.
Speaker:And in the first paragraph, the rate of women killed by intimate partner
Speaker:in Australia increased by nearly 30 compared to the previous year, according
Speaker:to data released by the Australian Institute of Criminology on Monday.
Speaker:eight more than were killed in the previous year.
Speaker:The data has been released after the alleged murders of 26
Speaker:women at the hands of men in the first four months of the year.
Speaker:But again, dear listener, the preceding paragraphs talk about intimate partner.
Speaker:Then they use the data of 26 women at the hands of men, allegedly, where we
Speaker:know that that includes five women from.
Speaker:The Bondi incident, which was not an intimate partner, homicide.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:So, lazy, misleading, journalism.
Speaker:it then goes on to say, while an uptick on the previous year, the rate of
Speaker:female intimate partner homicide was still the third lowest rate for more
Speaker:than 30 years since the records began.
Speaker:and the rate of women killed by partners has decreased by
Speaker:66 percent since that time.
Speaker:But we're a fair way into the article at this point, and it shows the graph
Speaker:that we've just shown you on the screen.
Speaker:And, and then, now what are the authors, dear listener, of this report, this
Speaker:one that we've been quoting, which is the, let me go all the way back up.
Speaker:Did I get it correct?
Speaker:the Homicide in Australia 2022 23 Statistical Report, Australian
Speaker:Government, Australian Institute of Criminology, two authors, Hannah
Speaker:Miles and Samantha Bricknell.
Speaker:So Samantha Bricknell is then, quoted in this Guardian article and she says, Dr.
Speaker:Samantha Bricknell, a research manager at the Australian Institute of
Speaker:Criminology, said that the increased rate of intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:needed to be considered within the context of the downward
Speaker:trend of the data over 30 years.
Speaker:Quote, I mean a fact is a fact.
Speaker:We've had a 28 percent increase in the rate and a 31 percent increase
Speaker:in the number of female victims of intimate partner homicide, she said.
Speaker:That's not to take away that we've had that.
Speaker:But we're just not sure at this point whether this is a reflection of an
Speaker:increase in female victimisation from intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:Or just a factor of a change in the pattern as we've emerged from COVID.
Speaker:And, so she, she's making the point.
Speaker:There's a long term trend here that we've got to look at.
Speaker:yeah, and she's the author of the report.
Speaker:Ah, what else do we have?
Speaker:We have Crikey repeated the Guardian article.
Speaker:where it said, Crikey said eight more women were killed by
Speaker:their partner or ex in 2022 than the, 2023 than the year before,
Speaker:It was also worth noting that report did say that there was a drop around
Speaker:lockdown and we may be just seeing rebound back to normal after lockdown.
Speaker:Yes, that's right.
Speaker:Yep, exactly right.
Speaker:So, because during lockdown, less movement of people.
Speaker:and also I think in the report, maybe I read somewhere, I will come
Speaker:to it, increased financial stress on people, can also lead to increases in
Speaker:domestic violence, so, Crikey anyway repeated, the 26 killed, victims.
Speaker:At the same time, I was talking about intimate partner homicide, so I got
Speaker:that statistic mixed in amongst that.
Speaker:And, and then we had an article in the, now I think this was the John Menardew
Speaker:blog, Christine Zawicka, Melbourne based columnist and a consultant who's
Speaker:a regular contributor to Women's Agenda, The Age, a Sydney Morning Herald.
Speaker:And She, in her paragraph in the article, said, well actually
Speaker:this was in Crikey again.
Speaker:She, writing in Crikey, said, The nation is indeed at the peak
Speaker:of what has long been a crisis.
Speaker:I don't want to waste time having a semantic debate about whether we
Speaker:need to call it a national emergency.
Speaker:It was bad before and it's even worse now.
Speaker:Now, dear listener, if we're talking about Non homicide domestic violence.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:I haven't seen any of the data.
Speaker:And, but most of the commentary about this is talking about the
Speaker:intimate partner homicide rate.
Speaker:Not just sort of homicide assaults and other, not just domestic violence assaults
Speaker:or non homicide domestic violence.
Speaker:So,
Speaker:It's misrepresenting what is happening with intimate partner homicide.
Speaker:Um, what else have I got here?
Speaker:Patricia Cavallis on ABC radio.
Speaker:You don't like her, do you?
Speaker:No.
Speaker:Do you like her?
Speaker:No, she doesn't worry me.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I know she's a, I know she's a lesbian and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker:so you're gonna take some of what she says with a grain of salt, but
Speaker:Haven't heard much of her, but the little bit I've seen on Bits and Pieces
Speaker:has not impressed me, but I haven't, because I think she's Melbourne based
Speaker:and on Melbourne radio, like she's sort of a morning presenter or something?
Speaker:She's the morning presenter on she's not actually Melbourne based, I think
Speaker:she does the Radio National mornings.
Speaker:Ah, is that it?
Speaker:Yeah, and
Speaker:she also looks after Q& A these days.
Speaker:And yeah, so I don't listen to her.
Speaker:Radio, ABC or anything.
Speaker:And I can't watch Q& A anymore.
Speaker:No, it's just ridiculous.
Speaker:There's only so much a man can take.
Speaker:Anyway, she was, I've got a, there's a transcript of some audio where she was
Speaker:in a sort of a podcast y type thing.
Speaker:This is Patricia Kovales.
Speaker:Not only hasn't it gone away, There is evidence that it's getting
Speaker:worse, and that is sobering.
Speaker:And the comparison I make in my piece is to homophobia.
Speaker:Now I'm gay, and I've experienced a radical reduction
Speaker:in homophobia in my lifetime.
Speaker:It's not to say I don't experience it.
Speaker:Still, I do.
Speaker:But it's not the way it was when I was in my teens, in my early twenties.
Speaker:No way.
Speaker:And there's been a reduction in hate crimes.
Speaker:That's not to say they don't happen, but a reduction.
Speaker:And so I thought the same with women, that we would see a reduction in the
Speaker:violence perpetrated against women by men.
Speaker:And we haven't.
Speaker:And this year, of course, the reason it's so much on the agenda
Speaker:is it's actually accelerated.
Speaker:Every four days we've seen a woman killed, allegedly by a man, and so
Speaker:clearly our programs are not working.
Speaker:For There must be something else going on.
Speaker:And the person interviewing her said, So PK, I think it's widely seen now
Speaker:that this is a national emergency.
Speaker:We're at crisis point.
Speaker:You can just look at the figures to know that.
Speaker:You can't really debate against it.
Speaker:So let's have a look at what the government's going to do about it.
Speaker:They're talking about intimate partner homicide, and that
Speaker:we've peaked with a crisis.
Speaker:And the chart shows that.
Speaker:That's just not the case.
Speaker:Now, by all means, we don't want domestic violence, we don't want domestic homicide.
Speaker:We want programs to improve it.
Speaker:We're never going to get rid of it all, but we can always improve.
Speaker:It's good to talk about it, but let's just talk the truth and
Speaker:put things in proper context.
Speaker:And when you start bullshitting, then people who genuinely have an
Speaker:agenda against this, helping these programs, will use that to say, oh,
Speaker:you're all just talking shit because look, here's the, here's the facts.
Speaker:And people just look disingenuous.
Speaker:It's, it's not helpful.
Speaker:Anybody else want to get in trouble for making a comment?
Speaker:I'll just keep going.
Speaker:I was about to say, In one of the articles, and I can't remember which one,
Speaker:there's Walid Ali going on about all the different drivers of this, and he's going,
Speaker:you know, violent pornography again.
Speaker:And a whole load of other things.
Speaker:He seems to miss out strong religious beliefs as a driver
Speaker:of gender based violence.
Speaker:And I can't, can't for a reason think why that might be.
Speaker:Yes, because his religion is important to him, perhaps?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's one of those things, I think the more we uncover the statistics and everything
Speaker:like that, it's just going to, it's going to look like what the, what the drivers
Speaker:of this are actually, they're lying to us.
Speaker:You know, they're picking up something, and they're saying, well,
Speaker:this is proof, when it's not proof.
Speaker:I have just looked at the comments.
Speaker:Joe, I wasn't saying that you were too lively last week.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:no,
Speaker:no, that my volume was.
Speaker:No, I wasn't saying the volume was compressed.
Speaker:Yes, that was it, yes.
Speaker:Yeah, I was translating
Speaker:that.
Speaker:Now,
Speaker:let's try and look at some domestic violence solutions, having now, sort of,
Speaker:looked at the statistics and, in the John Menendee blog, there's a guy called Ian
Speaker:McCauley who sort of does a roundup of what's been happening during the week and
Speaker:so he wrote, it's possible that there's sharp fall in real wages over 2023.
Speaker:and suddenly imposed mortgage stress could be contributing
Speaker:factors to the recent rise.
Speaker:Researchers from Monash and Melbourne universities say there
Speaker:is a strong correlation between domestic violence and unemployment.
Speaker:Minister for Women, Katie Gallagher, explains coolly that even the most
Speaker:energetic process to end violence against women will take a generation.
Speaker:Before it could be eliminated.
Speaker:In part, that's because it can be intergenerational.
Speaker:Many perpetrators of domestic violence grew up in violent households.
Speaker:governments can do something in the short run.
Speaker:Mentioned some of those.
Speaker:but those initiatives in the short run are about imminent danger faced by women
Speaker:in a relationship with a violent partner.
Speaker:So this is sort of access to shelters and access to money and stuff like that.
Speaker:He writes, It is possible that some factions of the Me Too movement
Speaker:believe that all men are predisposed to violence and therefore it is futile
Speaker:to try to change their behaviour.
Speaker:That view ignores the reality that there's been progress over the long run.
Speaker:He says that, Some people look on all men and all women as a homogenous community.
Speaker:All men are guilty, even if they don't realise it.
Speaker:A gender equivalent of the rubbish known as critical race theory.
Speaker:He says, a version of this view is that action to address gender based violence
Speaker:must be directed at all men collectively.
Speaker:He says, supported by a solid research base, criminology professor Michael
Speaker:Salter of the University of New South Wales and Jess Hill dispute this model.
Speaker:It's one of, Treating men collectively, and its collective approach in a paper
Speaker:called Rethinking Primary Prevention.
Speaker:Salter summarises their research in a nine minute interview on ABC.
Speaker:There's all the links to this in the show notes, dear listener.
Speaker:And it goes on, Violence against women is most common in societies
Speaker:where there is gender separation and men and women are unequal.
Speaker:Achieving gender equality is a necessary condition for
Speaker:eliminating violence against women.
Speaker:But it is not a sufficient condition.
Speaker:Public policy using measures appropriate to particular situations should address
Speaker:those boys and men who are at risk of engaging in violence against women.
Speaker:Those particular situations may be communities Among communities
Speaker:with a tradition of strong male control in families.
Speaker:Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
Speaker:Joe and Scott thinking of communities where there might be
Speaker:strong male control in families.
Speaker:No idea what you're talking about.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:No,
Speaker:we wouldn't be thinking of religious groups.
Speaker:No, exactly.
Speaker:He goes on.
Speaker:The main task lies in changing the attitude of behaviour of men who
Speaker:believe there is some special quality That sets men apart from women.
Speaker:He says we still have a long way to go before we live in a society
Speaker:where men and women live together in true equality and mutual respect.
Speaker:in the Human Development Report, Australia lies at number 17 on gender equality.
Speaker:Ahead of the USA and UK, but behind the Nordic countries.
Speaker:And, breaking down gender separation would help establish better
Speaker:attitudes and behaviour among men.
Speaker:All this makes sense to me so far.
Speaker:He says, there are longer established organisations promoting male bonding,
Speaker:such as, Sodalites in the Catholic Church.
Speaker:What is a sodalite?
Speaker:Sodalites?
Speaker:I've never heard of it.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Is
Speaker:that where sodomites go to?
Speaker:No, that's not where we go to.
Speaker:Anyway, there are longer established organisations I presume it's a sodality.
Speaker:Sodality, yes.
Speaker:There are longer established organisations promoting male bonding.
Speaker:Such as, so in the Catholic church, brotherhoods in Islamic
Speaker:communities and football clubs,
Speaker:Wiki, PBS says in Christian theology, a sodality in is a form of the
Speaker:universal church expressed in a specialized task oriented form.
Speaker:Right?
Speaker:so confraternities
Speaker:is another word for them.
Speaker:So, ah, yes.
Speaker:Brotherhoods.
Speaker:Brotherhoods, yes.
Speaker:he says, as powerful institutions strongly defended traditions.
Speaker:That may not be strictly described as misogynistic, but which valorise
Speaker:male qualities of aggression and dominance over women, and he said,
Speaker:The concluding paragraph, we will know we have made progress when the last
Speaker:girls and boys schools have gone co ed.
Speaker:When football and boxing matches have been consigned to the same history
Speaker:as gladiator fights and duels.
Speaker:When women's magazines and their male equivalents are found only
Speaker:in the stacks of libraries.
Speaker:And when gender separation has become as reviled as racial segregation.
Speaker:So in a summary, getting the genders together, not separating them, and
Speaker:creating equal gendered societies of equal opportunity and mixing, those are the
Speaker:societies that have less gender violence.
Speaker:And that would make sense to me.
Speaker:I noticed that certainly in the past they've talked about plans to teach
Speaker:boys to be respectful of girls.
Speaker:And there was a whole series of adverts on TV.
Speaker:I, I really don't think that is the answer.
Speaker:I think you need to teach everybody to be respectful of everybody.
Speaker:And possibly a way of disagreeing without resorting to violence.
Speaker:Thanks.
Speaker:Yes, and guess what, just living together and going to school together, you'll
Speaker:be taught a hell of a lot more than a slogan or an ad campaign might do.
Speaker:For all those people out there sending their kids to single sex schools.
Speaker:And crying when they can't.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Oh, this is a statistic heavy episode.
Speaker:But let's just finish off with some more statistics and then we'll be done.
Speaker:Remember, dear listener, I was talking about the Queensland statistics
Speaker:because the, I was having great delight in telling people who read the
Speaker:Courier Mail and were thinking that there was a lot of violence around.
Speaker:You realize, of course, that, you know, crime's on the way down.
Speaker:Except for crimes by children, because of course.
Speaker:The Courier Mail has a particular hard on for that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Anyway, and I mentioned at either last week or what, that I was going
Speaker:to look more closely at the statistics in the recent report to try and
Speaker:figure out why this recent Queensland report seemed to be in conflict with
Speaker:the other stuff that I had read.
Speaker:And, so, There was a change in July 2021, which basically required police officers
Speaker:to report all criminal offences associated with domestic and family violence.
Speaker:So I think previously in domestic violence situations, they would not report lots of
Speaker:the stuff going on for whatever reason.
Speaker:Well, this says a large proportion of these are withdrawn, so I think they're
Speaker:now reporting the ones that withdrawn, whereas in the past they didn't.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:And, but, but they're required to, the police are required to
Speaker:report all criminal offences.
Speaker:Now, that was in 2020, July 2021, and to see what sort of effect
Speaker:this has had on the figures.
Speaker:I draw your attention to Table 1, Count and Rate of Selected Offences.
Speaker:Domestic family violence related offences.
Speaker:Other property damage.
Speaker:So, in 2020 2021, prior to this change, total property
Speaker:damage offences was 33, 000.
Speaker:And in the most recent report, it had increased to 41, 000.
Speaker:An increase of 8, 000.
Speaker:So 30%?
Speaker:If you look at other property damage by domestic violence, domestic family
Speaker:violence related, It was previously 3, 700 and in that same time period it went up
Speaker:to 11, 800, an increase of roughly 8, 000.
Speaker:So the increase in property damage offences was basically matched by an
Speaker:increase in property damage domestic family violence related offences brought
Speaker:about by this new reporting requirement.
Speaker:So, so that's a significant subset of property damage that increased
Speaker:and more or less accounted for the total increase over that time.
Speaker:Similar sort of story with assault, not quite as clear cut, but pretty similar.
Speaker:Assaults went from 30, 000 to 55, 000.
Speaker:Assaults related to domestic family violence went from 8, 000 to 27, 000.
Speaker:So, assaults generally rose by 25, 000.
Speaker:Assaults from domestic family violence rose by 19, 000.
Speaker:It was a significant proportion.
Speaker:So, so a lot of the, change in the crime rate seems to have been caused
Speaker:by this reporting requirement.
Speaker:And it has meant that, for those years, maybe you're no longer
Speaker:considering apples with apples.
Speaker:So, that would be some of the explanation involved in
Speaker:that.
Speaker:It actually says, consequently, 2021 to 2022 presents as a
Speaker:break in the time series.
Speaker:In other words, You cannot compare the numbers between, before
Speaker:that time and after that time.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:So, so yeah, there we go.
Speaker:oh, I think that's probably, oh, actually one more, one more statistic,
Speaker:but this is a good one, Scott.
Speaker:Census changes to dilute religion.
Speaker:Oh, yeah.
Speaker:That was that ridiculous article you sent us, wasn't it?
Speaker:Well, it seems, dear listener, that the census is canvassing and
Speaker:considering, because this was reported in the Australian What we've been
Speaker:asking for, for the last two or three censuses, yes.
Speaker:Well, even more so.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:Because, remember, dear listener, the history of the religious question
Speaker:in the census was one of originally.
Speaker:Tell us what religion you are, because of course you must be some religion.
Speaker:No, tell us
Speaker:what denomination you are.
Speaker:Which denomination of Christianity you are.
Speaker:Yes, that's right.
Speaker:Indeed.
Speaker:And then right at the very bottom, if you're one of those really
Speaker:weird people who's not religious, there's a little thing you can
Speaker:put for, you're not religious.
Speaker:And that then got changed to, you know, the last census, I think it was
Speaker:it was the same
Speaker:thing.
Speaker:But you had the first, but they, they moved No religion to
Speaker:the top.
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:No religion moves to the top.
Speaker:It was the first
Speaker:from the top.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And we'd been asking for something like the New Zealand, arrangement,
Speaker:which was, are you religious?
Speaker:Yes.
Speaker:No.
Speaker:If yes, which religion are you?
Speaker:Which seemed of a much better sort of Mm-Hmm.
Speaker:. Now, what was reported in the Australian is that the question will
Speaker:be, does the person have a religion, and there's a tick box for no.
Speaker:And then following that, there's no tick box for yes, instead there's a
Speaker:space where a person who has a religious belief can write their religion.
Speaker:So, does the person have a religion?
Speaker:And there's a box there, ready to tick to say no, and the alternative to that is
Speaker:to write in yourself the denomination or religious belief that you have, and not a
Speaker:series of Suggested religious categories.
Speaker:I think it's interesting.
Speaker:Archbishop Costello says reformulating the question destroys the
Speaker:measure of culture and identity.
Speaker:In other words, we can no longer claim people who feel that
Speaker:culturally, that they are religious.
Speaker:because, you know, they don't know any better, even though
Speaker:they don't believe in God.
Speaker:It's a pretty str if this goes through, Scott, this would be a massive change
Speaker:Yeah, that would be a huge change,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:Like, I'm almost at the point where I think it's almost unfair the other way.
Speaker:Like, I like the New Zealand one of Are you religious?
Speaker:Yes, no, if yes, which one?
Speaker:So I'm going, does the person have a religion?
Speaker:And the first thing is tick is no, and then a blank space where you
Speaker:write your religion if you have one.
Speaker:Almost goes the other
Speaker:way.
Speaker:It does seem just
Speaker:a little bit too extreme to do that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Was it not a write in or was it a series of, there was definitely a write in.
Speaker:It was a series of ticks.
Speaker:And then you had one box at the end of it, if you couldn't find your religion.
Speaker:Right, if you're not one of the
Speaker:major ones.
Speaker:Correct.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:That's where you had most of the clowns that would write Jedi.
Speaker:Yes, correct.
Speaker:But there was a suggested list.
Speaker:So, oh look, I love it.
Speaker:If this is how it's going to pan out, because most people don't,
Speaker:some of these people don't even know what religion they are.
Speaker:But the point was the religious were claiming those culturally religious
Speaker:people for funding and for greater clout when it came to laws being passed.
Speaker:When in fact they were
Speaker:true believers.
Speaker:Yeah, which is just, it's, I don't have a major problem with it.
Speaker:It's just I would prefer the New Zealand model where you had the number
Speaker:of religions that you could tick.
Speaker:But, if we're not going to get that, this is the next best thing.
Speaker:And it means that they're actually going to have to say to their people, you
Speaker:know, you're a Catholic, make sure you write Roman Catholic in the, in the book.
Speaker:Yeah, I mean, I
Speaker:have to think about it a bit more.
Speaker:I mean, you know, if you are a religious, you should know what your religion is.
Speaker:Exactly.
Speaker:Why, why give people, I mean, we're so indoctrinated, aren't
Speaker:we, and so used to things.
Speaker:It's not like many people will screw up their religion because the ABS have a list
Speaker:of this translates to, so whether you say you are a member of the Church of Jehovah
Speaker:or Jehovah's Witness or whatever you want to call it, they have a table that
Speaker:translates that into a single religion.
Speaker:Yes, true.
Speaker:What if I write Happy Clappy or something like that?
Speaker:Is that Pentecostal?
Speaker:Yeah, it probably does have that in the little cross reference section.
Speaker:Yeah, Pentecostal includes
Speaker:Happy Clappies.
Speaker:Happy Clappies,
Speaker:yeah.
Speaker:I don't know that anyone would self identify as that, but No, I don't
Speaker:think they would, but it's And if you really care, the ABS does
Speaker:print out a table of Yeah, codes.
Speaker:So each religion is coded down into a specific number.
Speaker:And you can look up your religion in that set of codes, and you can probably
Speaker:say, I am code 423, or whatever it is.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's one of those things, this is the last death rings, or
Speaker:last death howls of religion.
Speaker:They're claiming that they're now being persecuted, which is a
Speaker:ridiculous thing for anyone to say.
Speaker:And it is especially ridiculous from these pack of bastards that have had
Speaker:it far too good for far too long.
Speaker:They're persecuted because how many of the last Prime Ministers were religious.
Speaker:Scott, are you sure you can be on this podcast and continue with this job?
Speaker:We're just going to wait and see.
Speaker:I'm not going to be mentioning the podcast at my new employers.
Speaker:If Scott disappears from this podcast, you'll know why.
Speaker:Look, there was a commentator, James Macpherson, writing in
Speaker:some religious magazine y type website that I came across.
Speaker:I think James Macpherson used to write in The Spectator when I was
Speaker:arguing with Twelfth Man about, just the horrible things that
Speaker:would come out of The Spectator.
Speaker:I think he was one of their writers.
Speaker:And, Here goes, the ABS, Australian Bureau of Statistics, are currently finalising
Speaker:the question, blah blah blah, rigged.
Speaker:The result is already obvious.
Speaker:The number of invalid, indecipherable or ambiguous
Speaker:responses will go through the roof.
Speaker:And as such, the number of people reported as being religious will drop dramatically.
Speaker:I like this line.
Speaker:This is a good line.
Speaker:Blind Freddy doesn't need to be healed by Jesus in order to see where this is going.
Speaker:He goes on.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And this is how I think I remember him from The Spectator.
Speaker:Marxists don't like religion.
Speaker:This is another backdoor moment.
Speaker:Another brick in the wall.
Speaker:The government doesn't want anyone following a religion.
Speaker:That is not aligned with its Marxist principles or the ABC.
Speaker:and so the census is becoming just another tool to engineer society
Speaker:into the left's chosen image.
Speaker:Ah, it's a load of crap, isn't it?
Speaker:Great stuff.
Speaker:Great stuff.
Speaker:That's gold.
Speaker:Thank you, James McPherson for finishing off with a sense of humor.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What have we got in the chat room?
Speaker:What have people been saying?
Speaker:da da da da da.
Speaker:John Simmons says it sounds okay.
Speaker:that's most of the ones in there.
Speaker:Everyone was late to the chat because we started early, it seems like, so.
Speaker:Right, dear listener, I am out of town next week and it might make it podcast.
Speaker:May not be one, may be a recorded one, may be a different time, not sure.
Speaker:So long.
Speaker:So, I haven't even mentioned that to you guys, I'll talk about it
Speaker:off air when we finish up here.
Speaker:So, you should be following us on Facebook if you want to be updated
Speaker:as to what's happening, because little messages about change in time,
Speaker:et cetera, will get posted there.
Speaker:Thank you for listening, I hope you enjoyed all the statistics talk,
Speaker:I hope we made it interesting.
Speaker:Talk to you next time.
Speaker:Bye for now.
Speaker:And
Speaker:it's a good night from me.
Speaker:And it's a good night from him.
Speaker:Good night.