Australia

Today’s Photos

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It has been a very long hot and dry summer in Narrabri with temperatures way up and rainfall way down. Most days, the humidity has been below 20% and often night temperatures have not gone below 20C.

Farmers in the district have lost crops and some are now shooting stock because they can no longer afford to feed them.

Like many people in town, I have found it hard to keep enough water up to plants. Many of our potted flowers have died in the extreme heat. And our very hardy lillipillies have curled up their toes.

Other plants are stressed but hanging on like this Japanese honeysuckle

But then we have all these signs of hope for a better season ahead

“Gum nuts” on a cadgia tree suggest optimism for new babies!

 

 

Next door’s bougainvilleas seem to thrive as always.

I planted sunflowers last spring. They looked spectacular at their peak, and now look rather dead. But thousands of seeds will plant in the dirt and we may get multiplication next spring.

 

The “Culture War” is Real

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Our society is now so far removed from its christian roots that basic Biblical teaching is deemed offensive. I wouldn’t have given “Revolve” to primary school children, but there s far more explicit stuff in “Dolly” and “Girlfriend”.

Victoria is further down the  slippery slope than New South Wales but we can’t be far behind. When Bibles in a traditional format where distributed to Year 6 students in Narrabri a few years ago, some parents were outraged.

From the ABC:

Access Ministries under scrutiny after ‘inappropriate and offensive’ material given out at Victorian primary school

 

Victoria’s Education Department has launched an investigation into what it calls inappropriate and offensive religious material distributed at a primary school.

The ABC understands religious educators handed out material at Torquay College last year that instructed children to seek counselling if they had homosexual feelings.

The material also claims that girls who wear revealing clothes are inviting sexual assault and that masturbation and sex before marriage are sinful.

The so-called Biblezines were given as graduation gifts as part of a program run by the state’s Christian education provider Access Ministries.

Naja Voorhoeve, whose seven-year-old child received the material from an older student, says special religious instruction (SRI) providers should be banned from public schools.

“If the SRI providers were prepared to breach our trust in this matter, you have absolutely no idea about the other things that they’re doing, about instances in other schools where this material might have been handed out,” she said.

“My personal position is that SRI volunteers should not be allowed in schools because their programs cannot be adequately monitored.

“What they do is not part of the curriculum… so they’re basically let in on their own.”

The department says it has launched an investigation into the material and the actions taken by the provider.

“The materials are totally inappropriate and offensive and have no place in our schools,” it said in a statement.

“The department has scope to review the accreditation status of providers once are investigations are complete.”

Access Ministries has been contacted for comment.

Lyle Shelton: Why silence is no longer an option

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From ACL:

Why silence is no longer an option

parliament house

The Greens sure are committed.

Last week in the Senate they tried and failed to remove the Lord’s Prayer from parliament.

Since 1901, the prayer has been recited at the start of each sitting day in the senate and house of representatives by the president and speaker respectively.

A group of committed pray-ers is always present in each chamber. No one is forced.

Australia did not become what it is in a vacuum. Christianity had a profound impact on the development of western institutions, including parliament.

While not everyone in Australia is Christian (although more than 60 per cent tell the census they are), nothing changes the fact that Christianity made a significant contribution to making Australia what it is today.

It is a simple fact that Christianity is part of our cultural heritage in a way that other religions are not. That is no disrespect to them. The ethics and ideas of other religions simply did not have the same impact on the formation of western values and the Australian nation.

As the pre-European peoples of this land, indigenous people, are of course a huge part of our cultural heritage. Recognition of their cultural heritage is also acknowledged in parliament each day and that is fair enough. The Greens have not sought to remove this.

Most of us would condemn the cutting down of a 113 year old tree, but when it comes to our cultural heritage the Greens are happy to fell any vestiges of the values of our past.

Greens Senator Richard Di Natale cites the separation of church and state for wanting to remove the prayer.

This misunderstanding of the concept is becoming wearisome. The Greens and others who abuse this concept are attempting to cloak their secularism in neutrality and objectivity, but in reality seem to be excluding Christianity in order to substitute their own secular irreligion.

Australia was founded with the principle of separation of church and state but it was never meant to keep religious ideas, people or even prayers out of public life.

It was simply to ensure that Australia, unlike Britain, did not have an established church constitutionally entwined with the state.

The idea was for all religions to be allowed to flourish without any being favoured by the state.

 

Read the rest here

Australian Farmers- Least Subsidised and Most Efficient

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With many parts of Eastern Australia in drought, our farmers are again doing it tough and asking for emergency relief. So how do we compare with other cuntries in support for farmers?

From the ABC:

Malcolm Turnbull correct: Australian farmers among world’s least subsidised

Mr Turnbull is correct on farmers' subsidies. There’s been intense debate about the Federal Government’s refusal to subsidise General Motors and SPC Ardmona. And there are still questions about the Government stepping in to assist Qantas.

Federal Treasurer Joe Hockey has said the age of entitlement is over.

On ABC TV’s Q&A program, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull was asked whether the Government’s hard line on subsidising the manufacturing industry also applied to agriculture.

He said: “Our farmers are among the least subsidised in the world, the least supported in the world.”

  • The claim: Malcolm Turnbull says Australian farmers are among the least subsidised in the world.
  • The verdict: Australian farmers receive subsidies of 3 per cent, ranking them the second lowest in the OECD.

ABC Fact Check examines the evidence on agricultural subsidies.

Read the full story here

A Sick Religion That Encourages Child Abuse

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I was sickened when I heard of the outrageous story of a 12 year old girl illegally “married” to a 23 year old man.

Apologists for Muslim groups claimed that the man was ignorant of Australian laws. I believe the imam who conducted this procedure should be charged with being an accessory to child sexual abuse.

My blood boiled when I read this morning that the father of the girl was not some uneducated Afghan refugee, but a native-born Australian who converted to Islam. What a sick excuse of a man.

From the Daily Telegraph.

THE Muslim convert father of the 12-year-old girl at the centre of a child sex case following her “marriage” to a 26-year-old foreigner confessed his unhappiness at their union, but said “it was not my decision”.

But the fifth-generation Australian man, who allowed the pair to be married by an imam in his Hunter Valley home on January 12, now says he fears she is going to “die” from a broken heart.

He also addressed public outrage on the case following the 26-year-old Lebanese man’s arrest on Thursday, saying he might “cop a little bit of abuse off people but I will have to cope with that”.

Read the full story here