2016

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Mar122016

ENVIRONMENT Food bowl emptied due to conservationist myopia

ENERGY & ENVIRONMENTMarch 12, 2016

Writing recently in Quadrant Online, Alan Moran from the Australian Environment Foundation (not to be confused with the Australian Conservation Foundation), pointed out that agricultural production in the Murray-Darling Basin, which not long ago accounted for some 40 per cent of total agricultural production in Australia, is now under threat. A steep decline in the availability of water for irrigation has led to a concomitant decline in agricultural output. The decline in water availability has nothing to do with a real shortage of water, but is purely the result of deliberate changes in policy. When the environmentalist lobby first campaigned…

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Mar122016

NATIONAL AFFAIRS Welcome backdown on vaccinations

NATIONAL AFFAIRSMarch 12, 2016

Just weeks after an article was published in News Weekly – and after months of campaigning by concerned Australians – the Victorian and federal governments have agreed to make vaccinations available to refugee children in Australia holding temporary protection visas. The sudden backdown was advised by the Victorian Department of Health to the Victorian Women’s Friendship Group, which has led the campaign for free vaccinations. President of the group, Helen Jurcevic, emailed the good news to people who had campaigned on the issue. She said: “After months of letter, emails, telephone calls to the politicians, the press and a publication…

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LETTERS

POETRY LETTERS & HUMOURMarch 12, 2016

China and our defence Sir, Australia’s Defence by David Archibald, as reviewed by Hal Colebatch (News Weekly, February 27, 2016), can only be commended for offering solutions to some of Australia’s most pressing problems. The book, however, fundamentally misconstrues several important considerations. China’s strategies have not changed for millennia. The Chinese strategy is to make incremental advances, not head-on attacks. The South China Sea is ideal for this. They can play off one set of claimants against the others, and set players whom they might consider potential allies, for example Taiwan and the Philippines, against each other. Moreover, Archibald completely…

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LETTERS

POETRY LETTERS & HUMOURFebruary 27, 2016

More to Mannix Sir, Colin Jory’s review of Brenda Niall’s Mannix omits to ask why she interviewed two laicised priests, but not Cardinal Pell, about Archbishop Mannix’s life or why no reference was made to the Cardinal’s panegyric at the funeral Mass for Bob Santamaria. It would have been interesting to know what Mannix would have made of a number of key Movement works – AD2000, the Thomas More Centre and the Australian Family Association. Some inkling of His Grace’s thinking could have been derived from his strong support for the Institute of Social Order (Belloc House), initially led by…

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