Peter Watson MLA - Member for Albany

Peter Watson MLC is the Labor member for Albany. What's he actually done in his time?
Well for the most part he's done nothing wrong. Not done much else really.

He organises plenty of things, wears funny hats, silly costumes gets in front of a microphone and has a sing along where food is free or cheap. Little cabaret act, but politically, no not a lot. As a long standing incumbent he really needs a scandal to be turfed out. Doing nothing wrong is generally enough to keep getting elected for an incumbent.

He's Speaker of the Lower House. What's this mean?
It means he gets a nice boost in salary and staff.
It means he cannot vote on the floor of the parliament unless there is a tie and with the large majority Labor has, he will not vote at all for the entire duration of this Parliament.
He takes no formal part in government business at all. Yes he can get in the ear of the Premier or ministers but he has not formal ability to affect any change at all. He's the umpire of the Parliament.

He's a member of Labor so even if he could vote, he cannot cross the floor in the best interests of his electorate. If he did so as Speaker he faces the possibility of being expelled from the party. If he did as a normal MP he would definitely be expelled from the party. So to secure his place both he and any other Labor MP will not cross the floor ever. The cult will deliver brutal payback on such independent thinking.

He stood on the steps of Parliament with a 40,000 signature petition complaining about cuts to education. He was in opposition at the time and that was an opposition ploy. He cannot be consistent in Government. That's all in the past. So when people ask "Why are you not supporting education the rural & regional areas? Why is Moora Residential College being closed for lack of $500,000 yet PerthLabor Government pours $3Million into developing "live music scene" in Perth?"

There's no answer other than to blame the previous government. They weren't perfect either, but they're not in power now & they're not advocating $3Million for Perth live music instead of $500,000 for Moora.
Moora is a regional education hub servicing students from many thousands of square kilometres to north and east of Moora.
There's also no need to axe the Boarding Away from Home Allowance (BAHA) for the most vulnerable in the regions who haven't got a High School nearby & cannot afford the expensive Perth Private Schools. The likes of Moora is essential and the BAHA is also.

Labor axed the School of the Air, but thankfully due to outcries it was reversed. It was a savage & thoughtless decision and reversing it doesn't excuse it. With Labor crowing it has the most regional MPs of any party you'd think they'd all know of that decision in advance. None did. Not one. And none of them wanted to comment on it. One slipped up and said he knew nothing of it until it's public announcement. Biggest regional education cut to the most remote students and not told nor consulted. Stark reminder that Labor's MPs in the bush are cardboard cutouts & do as they're told by their masters regardless of their electorate's needs.

South West Rescue Chopper was axed too, but reinstated after huge public outcry. Again the Regional Labor MPs like Peter Watson went into siege mode in the bunker. No comments made before during or after the backflip. It was a savage & thoughtless decision, proven so, yet no comment and silence was the stern reply.

Ag Schools are now targeted for a gouge of their working account.

School Camps are to be closed and sold to developers.

CRC's are to cop a 40% funding cut. There's 2 in Peter Watson's electorate, but he's laying low and trying to get photos taken of him at sporting matches as a distraction.

Now Labor is on the Live Export bandwagon, avoiding facts and going with feelings.
The 2400-2500 deaths was utterly repulsive and indefensible but thankfully its a statistical outlier NOT common practice. The death rate in transit rarely goes over 0.7%
The RSPCA kills 250,000 unwanted pets a year which equates to an estimate 2.6% of the Australian Pet Population. No deafening outrage on that worse statistic & no calls by Labor & Peter Watson to ban all pets & companion animals. Funny that.

If the Livex trade is banned that's 3 Million+ extra animals that will have to be processed in WA, many in the north where there is no processing facilities. WA Processors say they can take on all the livestock from the Live Trade, process it here and sell it.
Why is Peter Watson not asking "Why aren't you doing that now? If you can, just out compete the Livex trade in the market place, can't you do it now because if you can, why aren't you? Are you waiting for the livestock prices to fall to zero with a market ban first?"

Peter? Where are you? Take of you're silly cowboy or Santa hat and stump up some answers based on Facts not Feelings.

Banning the trade will cause an economic, ecological and animal welfare disaster beyond all known proportions. Rangelands and farmland relies on sheep & cattle industry to make lands viable and business profitable. Production of livestock for domestic markets or foreign chilled boxed relies on Livex to hold the farm gate prices up. The market needs the competition. Remove the biggest player the price plummets and we see a repeated disaster that the Gillard Ban caused that shut rural businesses down, bankrupted producers and led to many suicides.

Peter? Where are you?

 

He's gone full socialist cult with full socialist dogma at hand, behind the façade.
Anything that wins is fair, even if everything socialists touch is ruined.
The removal of the Livex will destroy the market price, the flow spending that has an economic multiplier of minimum 3 to 4.

The savage payback isn't restricted to agriculture, its pushed onto any non Labor, non Perth seat.
Education is being savaged and its ramping up.

Did you know that more money is going into Basketball in the Premier's electorate in just one year than will go into the Ice/Meth Rehab programme in Albany over 2 years? Fact.

Did you know that the Premier has visited Washington, London, Germany, China, Japan & Dubai in his first year but hasn't visited Moora to explain the College Closure? Can't even get the Education minister to go to Moora.

This is not a City vs Country Fight, this is a PerthLabor Party vs the Country fight. Most city people are unaware of the current unfair gouge fest by PerthLabor or the horrible affect its having on rural & regional people. To further explain it, if the PerthLabor Government loses all the seats they hold with a paltry 3% margin they'll lose 8 seats at the next elections. If they were to lose all seats with a 8% of less margin they'll lose 12 seats and also lose government. Its on a knife edge and they're trying every trick in the book to buy metro seats and like Federal Labor snatch up as many disgruntled Greens voters as possible.

       WHATEVER IT TAKES & TAKING FROM NON LABOR IS VERY FINE WITH THEM

So is all this swimming around in the gravy train whilst gouging the regions as political payback a real thing or is it just a political whinge...Have a look at the following & decide for yourself. Its pretty easy to see & understand.

This is the Labor Treasurer Ben Wyatt, from Hansard.

 

And this is from Ken Travers who was a Labor MP until he retired prior to the last State Election



Again from Hansard, Labor MP Darren West admitting the gouging & paying for the costs of pork barrel sweetners popping up in metro Labor was not about budget repair

Dear Geoff Hutchison

Dear Geoff, (and anyone else of a open mind with hunger for facts & logic)

I'm glad that Live Export is getting a run on the Mainstream Media like your show, but as best as anyone can do, much of the smoke n mirrors of various interests can cloud important facts. Here's just a few.

 

 

1. Animals Australia is not an Animal Welfare group, its an Animal Rights/Animal Liberationist group. There's a large distinction with the latter having a very determined cult like culture. It is against all animal farms, animal farming & animal farmers and that's a fact it likes to hide. It is against food and any other products being derived from animal sources. It often applies human rights and transfers them illegitimately to animals to serve their purpose. It is not aiming for long term improvements in animal welfare between the paddock & the plate, its aim is to eliminate the animals from the paddock AND the plate.
2. I have never met a farmer or even heard of one who is in favour of or has even staggering difference towards animal cruelty. It is however a determined and deliberate tactic to use terms like blood money, murderers or phrases that suggest farmers are keen to make money off cruelty. That's a ethical judgement that just does not stack up. If we stick to facts not feelings we soon see this accusation for what it is, false, misleading and irrelevant. Its designed to go emotional to try & trump facts or lack of facts. We are not monsters, I reject the views or position of anyone that also holds or spreads that false view. It's intellectually corrupt & ethically wrong. I have no respect for those that allow that to go unchallenged. Its sloppy & lazy thinking from poisoned spoon feeders.
3. The 2500 deaths. I don't not the exact number but will call it 2500. I do not know of anyone who is ok with that death rate. I know of not one person. I wish the Animal Liberationists could point to the person who is fine with it. There is one clear yet deliberately hidden fact. As utterly disgusting, repulsive & unacceptable as the 2500 deaths were, it is thankfully a statistical outlier. IT IS NOT COMMON STANDARD PRACTICE.
   The Transit Mortality Rate figures clearly show an industry improving with a negative trendline in on board deaths. The facts are it's been going down for years and rarely goes above 0.7%. The industry loses huge amounts of money and with 2500 deaths someone has lost close to $250,000 but probably a lot more when you factor in loss of profit margin, the cost of the animals, freight cost and feed cost prior & during the trip. No one benefits, no one will be happy, no one enjoys this at all. The industry relies on the mortality rates being as close to zero as humanly possible.
4. With this being a statistical outlier we have to look at what action needs to be taken and against who. Animal Liberationists want a complete ban. This is again feelings over facts. You do not solve a problem by punishing all the compliant mainstream because of statistical outliers, no matter how repugnant & revulsive the outlier's result was. With this absurd logic extended we must now, due to the current Banking Royal Commission, abolish the entire Banking & Financial Sector due to the serious breaches by some banks. Is this how it works?
   No, we isolate the problem sources and deal with them directly for the problems they have caused & elevate regulation to prevent it reoccurring.
   
        Punish the offending outliers NOT the compliant majority. It is that simple.
5. When we look at Mortality Rates, aside from disgraceful outliers, the rate is very low. If we compare it to the very big, powerful Pet Industry we notice something very startling. Livex Mortality Rates are comparatively low. There are approximately 9.6 Million pets or companion animals in Australia. The RSPCA annually destroys approximately 250,000 unwanted pets a year. That's deaths that need not happen. Unnecessary deaths. That does not include unreported deaths by dog pounds, rangers and pest controllers. If ethically one death is appalling then all are. That mortality rate of the Pet Industry is then now 2.6% and likely higher, how much higher we don't know. And why is it companion animals and their mortality that is hidden ignored or omitted. Its hard to say but for some Liberationists the fact we generally don't eat pets means "they're not comparable" - That tells me the deaths aren't actually that important to them, its the consumption of meat that's the perceived greatest crime. Fact remains 0.7% versus 2.6+%
6. Live export into Indonesia is required because such a small percentage of consumers have electricity. In fact refrigeration ownership is just 24% in Indonesia. Only 32% of their rural  population has electricity. In bigger fact... 49,000,000 Indonesian citizens have no electricity at all. Add to this many people there have an aversion to frozen or chilled meat. Culturally the rejection is due to dodgy butchers have in the past used freezing and sealed packaging to hide spoiled or rancid meat. That can kill. The wet market isn't going away anytime soon and in the case of Indonesia, they don't want it too. Fresh & warm means they know what they get. That's not going away from at least 49 Million people so if we leave the trade, then live animals will have to be sourced from our competitors, which ironically are most further away from the market, requiring a longer sea voyage. I don't have data for the Middle East but one thing is for sure, the supposed boxed & chilled product won't replace the live trade unless it can land on the foreign consumers table for the same price. There is absolutely no data or suggestion that can be achieved. Its worth remembering if the trade is phased out & another phased in it has to be no penalty to producers or the consumers.
   
   Its early in the morning, I'll come back and add more later. There is much missed that needs to be covered. And yes I'll cite the sources. I'll cover what happens to the market were we to go fully Australian processed for boxed & chilled meat. It's a disaster waiting to happen.
   
      Facts not Feelings - Penalise the offending outliers NOT the compliant Majority.

Facts Not Feelings - But Did You Know?

Did you know that the Nazi were Fascists? You probably did.

Do you know that its a common smear on those of the right by those of the left. Yes people from the left love to call those on the right Fascists? You probably do know that too.

Now overlay that with the Facts not Feelings filter.

Did you know that Fascism is actually of the Left not the Right and that Fascism is actually a form of Socialism? It is. The real father of Fascism was an Italian Socialist philosopher named Giovanni Gentile who died during World War 2. He was a mentor and ideological guide of Mussolini. There's another clue of course, Nazis were "National Socialists"
Socialism is the form of State Owns & Runs everything dogma that's heavily based on Class identity and has capitalism & the upper classes as the enemy of the state.
Fascism is the form of State Owns & Runs everything dogma that's based heavily on the National identity and has capitalism, the upper classes, foreign countries & foreigners as the enemy of the state.

And yet many think Fascism is of the right. It's amazing how easily the majority of people will believe a line of thinking if it's pushed relentlessly enough even if its incredibly wrong.

Live Export in WA is under huge pressure especially since the vile footage of the most atrocious and unacceptable conditions aboard a ship carrier that resulted in the death of some 2500 sheep. There's a good deal of fact hiding and relentless lie pushing to the point where many reasonable people now believe quite false and misleading comments.

Lets apply the same "Facts not Feelings" filter up and see what it is that the anti Livex protesters don't want you to know or consider.

Firstly the 2500 deaths comes from the Middle East shipment that ran during a seasonal time when temperatures & humidity are stifling. More so it seems it was in an under prepared ship possibly not designed for those weather conditions. The high death rate is indefensible, atrocious and saddest of all avoidable.
So there's no backing away from the indefensible nature of that serious mess, but strangely I don't think anyone has.

Here's the solutions.
1) Apply engineering solutions to all shipments during the dangerous weather seasons and time voyages better...or most likely do both.
2) Penalise and/or ban those that fail to comply, NOT those who do comply with the standards.

Yes, penalise the offending outliers NOT the compliant mainstream because as reprehensible as the 2500 deaths shipment was, its actually a statistical outlier, it is not the norm. Look on the social medias and you will find, with out much effort anti Livex people saying its happening all the time.

(Apply Facts not Feelings Filter)

This claim is incorrect. Facts show the Transit Mortality Rate (as a percentage) has been & still is on a downward trend line for at least the last 8 years. That's a fact even when you include the 2500 deaths. That doesn't excuse the 2500 deaths, it widens th context and lessens false readings of the data. Fact is, it rarely goes above 0.7% of sheep shipped.

That's low. Its lower than average on farm mortality rate.
That's low alright, its lower than the actual mortality rate of the pet industry.
Now I don't mean Rover or Puddy-cat dying of old age or Wanda the fish dying because her time was up. No I mean the avoidable or at least un-necessary deaths of the Australian Pet Industry.
There's an estimated 9,200,000 pets in Australia and the RSPCA puts down between 70,000 and 80,000 unwanted pets each year. One other figure puts total euthanized pets across the country at close to 250,000 a year. That represents 2.7% deliberate but avoidable deaths of pets in this country.
Why is the outrage not the same or greater seeing the death rate is greater?
(We should add that the Pet Industry deaths via RSPCA are deliberate not accidental nor due to weather related extremes)

Because no one gets footage of the unnecessary RSPCA deaths onto 60 Minutes.
That figure is probably much higher as it doesn't include those euthanized by Vets, pounds or rangers.

Other facts omitted, ignored or deliberately hidden...

 - Live Export is a multi Billion Dollar Export industry that not only employs a vast number of Western Australians it has a knock on multiplier effect in our economy that is at the very least 3-4 times.
- Landcare & Rangeland Management in the Northern Half of Australia will cease with any permanent Live Export ban. There is no sustainable way to keep districts & vast station country viable without small pockets of mining which can never replace a small fraction of what livestock production does.

- Live Export actually underpins and holds up the domestic livestock prices at the levels they're currently at. Without Live Export there would be a massive glut in stock numbers and that's when farm gate prices tumble. How bad? Think back to the Flock Reduction Scheme where the government had to step in and pay for the destruction of sheep because they were worthless and delivery to saleyards meant that farmers we're charged for their disposal as they had no commercial value at all.

- Live Export is vital for overseas markets, no data on the Middle East but in 2nd & 3rd world countries reliable electricity & refrigeration is scarce.

In Indonesia...
Refrigeration ownership - 24%
Rural houses with electricity - 32%
49 Million Indonesians have NO ELECTRICITY AT ALL
Culturally, Indonesians and many 3rd world countries don't trust chilled or frozen as its the easiest way to hide rancid or rotten meat...which can kill.

There's also the fact electricity isn't as reliable and it costs a huge percentage of an average Indonesian's yearly wage compared to Australian citizens. You're looking at roughly AUD$150-200 a year which is a massive slice of the Indo Yearly Average Wage.

Feedlots especially in Indonesia cost 1/5th of an Australian feedlot with much lower slaughter & processing costs. The wet market product per kilo is a lot cheaper than a chilled/frozen product thats been processed in Australia.

We need not mention that some of the current Australian abattoirs are lamb chains and running extra shifts to kill & process large wethers just isn't physically possible. Building new infrastructure will cost billions, there's barely enough staff for the current infrastructure let alone a proposed domestic processing industry that'll take an extra 1.7Million to 3.1Million sheep and an extra 800,000 to 1.2Million cattle.
Then its compounded even further, there's been more abattoirs close in the last five years than new ones open. One of the new ones, the big one in Darwin is set to close.

Did we mention effects on the Chilled market? Apart from being swamped Qatar & other countries who have taken on ESCAS have said if Live is banned, they will ban Australian Chilled.
Australian Chilled does go into the Middle East but its the high priced premium market, which is a small segment that is many times cost of the delivered Live Product.
Short answer is, ban live & the farm gate prices plummets, local market swamped/destroyed and our competitors with no Animal Welfare standards (like Sudan & Somalia) take over delivering a greater Animal Welfare disaster potential. Oh, did we mention South America?
Extra 5 weeks at sea with no ESCAS.

Remember
Live export mortality rate 0.7%
Pet industry's unwanted pet death rate 2.7%

Facts Not Feelings.

This is why many of us say, penalise the offending outliers NOT the compliant mainstream in the industry. Yes as shocking as 2500 ship deaths on one voyage was, it remains a statistical outlier, not the norm. That doesn't excuse it. It helps to focus in, with proper context where the problem is so a proper in context solution can be applied without adversely affecting anyone innocent & compliant.

Unless you're prefer a fact free emotion based virtue rant unsupported by logic or truth.

Regarding the Live Export Trade

Regarding the Live Export Trade

Facts not feelings. When you let emotions take over, facts are lost and often become the enemy of the ranter as they highlight how little (or nothing) the ranter knows.
1) I don't support the unnecessary deaths on ships whether they're cruel or not. Don't know anyone who does - Don't play that false cruelty lie card. Its a deceptive emotional lie, not factual.

2) You should support the sensible approach. Penalise/prosecute/ban the offending outliers not the compliant majority. Yes outliers. These utterly disgusting examples are outliers, not the usual thing. Whoa up on your indignation gland, that doesn't excuse it, that points to the incredibly simple fact that EVERYONE is then able to focus on the small number of offenders & then separate them from the majority are fully compliant. Go after the offenders not the good guys.

3) The idea is, what with this being a $2Billion international trade is for all the stakeholders to earn money. For the system to work, they have to get as many alive to the destination as possible, they also need the livestock to gain weight in transit. When people bleat about blood money or money over animals rights they really are exposing themselves to be very real living brain donors. If the exporters don't make money, the trade stops...or they work out how to be more efficient. This atrocious example benefits no one so to say it's an act that anyone approves of or enjoys is again deceptive, its feelings not facts. Its an outrageous lie by people without the skerrick of intelligence, general those over burdened with post modernist lie disorder.

4) Wet Market, not only does most of the market go into homes with little or no refrigeration, many in these 3rd & 2nd world countries just plain won't trust chilled or frozen because dodgy butchers in their countries have routinely used freezing to hide rancid meat. If the meat is freshly slaughtered and warm they know what they're getting and they know its safe for their family.
They as a nation can store vast amounts of meat, not in freezers but in feedlots, where they gain more weight. At a far lower cost than the feedlot meat can be produced in Australia. They simply may not be able to afford the huge leap Australian processed will cost. They do not have the luxury of your life, your supermarket, your polystyrene trays with blood soakers & glad wrap and an full chain inspection system, health inspectors and serious penalties for selling rancid meat. Its very disingenuous & morally arrogant to impose the standards you're blessed with onto a country that hasn't and cannot have. Many have little or no reliable electricity let alone the ability to run a /fridge all year. They haven't got any of those standards and systems. That's real western bigotry & arrogance

5) Then aside from the fact free zone that most left wing crazed virtual signallers bellow from, none actually have the fortitude to explain their moral judgement. Saying someone else is immoral is an act of outright intolerance & bigotry unless you can satisfactorily explain their moral judgement system...you know where your morals come from. If its a true moral position I and many others will listen to it. But if its ill informed screeching from morally bankrupt rebels without a clue, well its just an opinion probably from a loud idiot. Where do your morals come from to make whatever so called moral judgement you declare. C'mon, toughen up, let us test it.

6) Apart from frozen/chilled not being able to work, even if it did (and in 100 years it might) who pays? To kill & process and then export and additional 1.5Million to 3.5Million animals domestically who actually does it when we have to import so many people each year to scrape thru the domestic kill trade we have now? And where does it happen? You'll have worked out the infrastructure required means we'd have to increase infrastructure 2-3 times the current amount and then have to find 1000s of workers that don't currently exist...in fact it'd be closer to 10s of thousands. Then we have to work out who pays for all this. I'll wait patiently for Sussan Leys's business case.

7) Yes on the who pays for this, we need all the activists to lobby their super funds. Apparently there's huge amounts of money to be made so they could all invest in ethical on shore slaughter & processing. Yeah, imagine that, protesters and virtue signallers putting up the money, the many billions needed to build and entire supply chain.

 

WHAT A MORAL & ETHICAL INVESTMENT!!!

I mean if onshore is the only way & its profitable then stump up the cash and get it rolling. Get some skin in the game and put competitive market pressure on the Livex trade and give everyone the option of a so called ethical alternative.
This doesn't happen because key board warriors generally have no business experience or any "moral" consistency due to being angry at the world because they can't find meaningful work due to corrupt nature of western society that won't employ a person with a university degree in gender studies or lesbian dance theory. Yes see how naughty feelings over facts are? I do wonder how accurate that might be though

Facts not feelings...when you produce and regularly use facts, you can then varnish them with a thin layer of feelings.
Fact often omitted or hidden - the ESCAS system is not perfect, but there is nothing like it in the world and the Transit Mortality Rate is on a downward trend as a result. The indefensible scenes from that ship is an outlier. Penalise the offending outliers not the compliant majority.
Otherwise activists ought to come clean and admit they're Animal Rights Activists not Animal Welfare stakeholders

There is another fact that is overlooked or omitted because it is so devastatingly sad. The amount of bankruptcies & foreclosures on producers and local businesses that the last horrid Live Export Ban. Worse still the number of suicides it caused. Suicides in general are not reported due to the high chance of copy cat incidents. It's very much avoided when they're primary producers or rural/regional small business owners. I'm mentioning it for the very reason that Sussan Ley and other thoughtless virtue signalling evil clowns might pull their heads in and think.

The Traps & Pitfalls of Engineering Gender Balance in the Workplace

Women make up slightly more than 50% of the population, therefore they should make up at least 50% of the seats on Company Boards, seats in the Parliaments & CEO positions in top ASX companies.

That's been the claim. It has some problems. So do some of the proposed solutions.

Firstly, 10% of the world's population is left handed. Therefore the workplace must represent this. Each board & every parliament must be 10% left handed and the rest right handed.

Secondly, 28% of the Australian population was born overseas, so for their unique qualities that they certanly bring, we need boards & parliaments to have 28% overseas born.

Thirdly, Indigenous Australians are roughly 18% of the population so Parliament & boards must have 18% Indigenous Australian. Surely?

Fourth, 63% of Australians are reported to be obese or overweight. We need that reflected in the boards & Parliaments. Health is a social issue so it makes sense to have stakeholders involved in the greatest health threat to the nation as captains of Industry & Legislation.
Fifth - 32% of the population live in rural or regional areas of Australian, therefore only 68% of all boards & parliaments should be city dwellers.

Sixth - I could go on forever with the angle of the silly thickened identity politics style assessment. This is part of the problem and the solution, so we must take the identity politics out of the equation and the answer.

Make it equal opportunity for all Australians, whether they're male, female, left or right handed Indigenous or not, born here or overseas, city or rural based, overweight smoker/non smoker, gay straight, atheist, devout faith follower...quit with the sub culture bracketry. Go with the facts, the requirements of the job and the best suited for the job. Is it so wrong to say "Sorry you weren't the best person for this job" or do you have to find a reason to carry your false offended back side? It is a sorry sad & pathetic clam to say " Its not me and my suitability its racist, ageist, sexist, elitist..."
You are not entitled to the job you have chosen. The job of your choice is not an option. If you fail to secure that job with that firm, guess what? That's life, go for another job and do what you can to make yourself the best person for the job. Compete for the job, not expect it to be allocated to you because of an accident of birth that designated your gender or some other divisive identity flag.

That's the problem part solved. Its not a matter of there's not enough of any particular identity, its a matter does the position have someone who is suitable, productive, effective irrespective of their clothes size, gender, sexual preference, hair colour, ethnic makeup, or any other minor & irrelevant grouping. The job criteria is about the job you have to suit it...not the other way around.

18% of the population is aged Zero to 15. Do we slide some of them onto boards? No we don't. So why use some other minor group splitting like age, gender, ethnicity or anything else over & beyond MERIT???

Here's the problems within some of the solutions.
Quotas.
Big problem. Why?

Quotas are a diabolical form of Social Engineering. Now I know with those that know (or perhaps don't realise) they have strong socialist/Marxist leanings, Social Engineering is terribly appealing because allowing the state to take control & engineer things in every day life seems like a short cut to equity. It just doesn't work well. When the state dictates a little, the state will want to dictate a lot. Quotas wont necessarily lead to a murderous communist regime but it doesn't help anyone and the possibility of it being amongst a suite of social engineering initiatives is pretty worrying. More worry when some genuinely good people with left leaning inclinations follow the harder line leftists and the minor & very wrong becomes law.
There's another issue. The advent of the term "Quota Queens". A derogatory term for those ushered in by "positive bias" because they possess that item of identity that the engineers decide needs favouring over & above others to reach a balanced goal. Now in this case some people were quite accurately quota queens, not really worthy of the role, but a person of a particular gender, race, religion etc was needed for the numbers. Some cop the term unfairly, some were legitimately qualified for the job & hopefully were actually employed solely on that basis and not because of the quota AND their identity group.

I can point to a mining company, a big well known mining company in WA's North West. It has a positive bias employment programme. It installed a number of women in middle management & supervisor roles. One specific one covering contractor project management despite a couple of them never having ever spent a day on the tools. A person I know managed a contract job where a car park was built. 18 months later another was required to be built on an adjacent space. These were not 3 bays, these were LARGE sealed parking lots. All was going swimmingly until the lady employed under their gender quota rolled up. She saw the completed 2nd car park area and said the whole lot would have to be re-sealed. No not one, both. She said the contractor had fouled up as the freshly laid asphalt was not the same colour as the other car park. It was explained to her that the colours would even out over time because ones fresh & one's 18 months old.
She ignored this and the company instead of paying for one new car parking lot actually paid for one & then for 2 new layers on top.

The morale there is improving as the supervisor gains experience and she's had to listen to advice from experienced workers. One of the men told me "She'll be ok in time, but its cost some big bucks in mistakes til she gets time & runs on the board. She'll be fine, but she shoulda have been on the tools for a few years to learn up". He went onto say a bloke would have been sacked or promoted sideways out of the way.
So there's problems ahead for unqualified women who leap frog into positions because they're female and there's problems for properly qualified, experienced women who get the job purely on merit. Both can be fairly or unfairly labelled quota queens and we keep the discrimination alive, well and still festering.

The right solution is simple. Set the job role out regardless of gender, race, religion or any other identity parameter. Allow anyone to apply and judge them solely on their ability, qualifications and suitability for the role. Set up penalties for those who deliberately discriminate. Allow merit, irrespective of identity parameters to rule the waves.

It is interesting, gender balance seems to only be aimed at very high paying white colour jobs. MPs, Senators, Company Directors, CEOs, higher executives, management layers. I haven't seen any initiatives in play to increase the number of women in brick laying, truck driving, shearing, roof tiling, drilling operators, diesel mechanics, plumbers, dozer operators, policing. Do they need to be 50:50 or do they have an exceptional case method?

I notice there's no shaken voice outcries for more men in nursing, child care, health or teaching. I know if I get sick there's not a 10% chance the nurse is left handed, 28% chance they're born overseas, not a 18% chance they're indigenous nor 63% they're overweight nor 50% chance they're male. I don't look at the gender of the doctor, sister, nurse or other health worker. I just look for good people doing their job well.

Did you know?
In 2011 there were 257,200 nurses, 90% of them are women. Is that fair, are we lacking a specific skill set men might bring? Why has the Identity Politics/Social Engineer's barge polling in this field of employment gone missing?

Are women better at it? Now if that question were aimed at a male dominated high paying white collar field there'd be a scary outcry of bigotry & intolerance, boys club, glass ceilings yada yada.

So what do we do with Nursing.
Well we can...

a) Socially engineer nursing so a workplace has to have 50% men.
b) We can force workplaces to reach the 50% target within a few years
c) We can accept that perhaps 90% of the people who apply happen to be women & this is reflected in the actual number employed and just go with that
d) We can ascertain if anyone (of either gender) has been employed unfairly, without proper training, experience or qualifications and either get them up to speed or get them out.
e) Accept that 50:50 is nice but if it means deterring women from applying because there's a quota in place & a large number of men will be accepted, some ahead of good women possibly some of those men not good enough but get the job because of the mere accident of gender at birth...

No. The solution is simple. Merit. Equal opportunity and Merit.
Going straight to equal outcomes (quotas, social engineering) actually reduces fairness, ignores merit and squashes equal opportunity.

Child birth - Oh man does this argument get messy. I point to Julie Bishop, Michaelia Cash, Julia Gillard. They sure did rise to the top, no quotas, just merit. None of them had kids. Its their choice I don't care but fact is child birth is going to set a career back. It does mean time out of the workforce.
Now the debate is whether women are unfairly disadvantaged career wise by having a child or whether men who do not give birth should be on the same footing career wise as a person who takes 12 months off work for child birth once or several times.

Pretty clear in brick laying I'd guess. Time off work due to these things does reduce productivity to the company over time. The debate will rage despite that.

One thing is for sure...

Equal Opportunity for all is the fairest way and it is based on merit, not identity.

Equal Outcomes goes straight to the desired outcome without any fairness, merit or equality & is counter productive.

The Socialists favour the latter and many good, well meaning people who lean to the left will get swept up in that Socialist distortion.

Anti Rural WA Sentiment is Growing

Most people had plans which included the rally at Parliament House yesterday over the Moora Debacle but its finally becoming apparent many had their Plan B ready if the rally produced no fair outcome or indeed did.

Rural people tend to react quickly to issues in the work place, they generally are a committee of one and it then becomes frustrating for them when they join a club or organisation and change isn't swift.

Country people traditionally have been fixers and do so with a good deal of velocity. Probably why many country people get frustrated by politics & political machinations...the wheels of government move slowly. Far too slowly for many of us. In fact even joining a Political Party turns out to be terribly frustrating for many country people. Solutions are obvious but positive change tends to be deathly slow if not totally elusive.

Being a member of a political party isn't altogether different to joining any other community group and people should view it as a Community Group engaging in Community Service. Yes there are ideological differences, there's splits in dearly held world views but that's the case in any rural community.

Point is when the going gets tough the tough get going and the tough now need to consider doing the contrarian move towards positive results.

Joining a WA Political Party.

Progress is slow, sometimes glacier like. There tends to be a lot of people with different jobs & focuses and the actual politicians are flat out trying to attempt triage and find the most important issues to heap change & pressure on whilst keeping pressure on the 2nd tier or peripheral issues.

Its not easy. You can see the solution to a big problem and so may they. Getting change is slow & difficult because the TV Show Hollowmen, Utopia, Yes Minister & Yes Prime Minister soon appear documentaries once you enter the tent door. Sad but true.

Thing is, if you join a party you may not become the rock star face of the party. You may just be (like me) one small tooth in a very large machine. Machines need every tooth. Teeth give feedback, help process, help hold one small part of the organisation and lighten the load.

So Moora Rally was not a failure. It just didn't get an immediate decision reversal.
What's your next move?

People have their plan B ready to go and it may not be spectacular sky show, it maybe simple small cog in the machine thing. The more cogs we in Regional & Rural WA the easier fair change will be.

It takes people to know fast change doesn't always happen. Sometimes its slow, glacier like. You have to go in with the long game plan and when things improve really fast you have to extra grateful the gift of velocity arrives unannounced & unexpected. Speedy fixes are the exception to the rule, but if you're not in the game, change against you is far more likely.

My advice is simple. Join a political party. Expect tons of effort with mixed results and those wins & losses will be very slow. But if you're not involved the change will still happen, still be slow but more likely be harshly against what we living in the country need or want.

So consider picking out a political party & joining. Even if you do nothing, your membership fee does help. If you do get further involved know there are different worldviews within a party. There are still wins & losses and sometimes we end up with a position that seems counter productive to some of the members. That's life. After 50 years of watching I joined a political party. I'm a small tooth on a small cog in a machine that's bigger than me. It is a machine and it needs small teeth and small cogs.

If you want change, consider the bold idea of joining a political party and influencing change...even when its glacier slow.

A PerthLabor Minister & her inept Gender Bias View

Yes, I'm a bit stunned...and here's why. Simone McGurk MLA is State Member for Fremantle as well as Minister for Child Protection, the Prevention of Family & Domestic Violence, Women's Interests & Community Services in WA.

Sh also dabbles in the odd paper vote-grab/editorial/opinion piece but rest assured although she represents Fremantle (and you' hope the whole of WA as a minister), although she's responsible for Child Protection, Community Services and a few other things its on female related stuff she'll prattle on about. Yes women certainly need the fair play of equal opportunity and not have any extra hurdles put in their path because they're women. But the equality of outcome is a Socialist Construct that needs tobe feared and Simone McGurk may have to be monitored to she how socialist (i.e. unfair) she is. The Socialist pathway of Equal Outcomes seeks to forget opportunity & removal of unfair hurdles, it wants to go straight to equal results, where the gender balance in a workplace is 50% women & 50% men.

Not 100% equal opportunity to secure the outcome you then have to deserve. Indeed there are not 50% women applicants for all jobs so how can you expect 50% women employed unless that is the percentage of women amongst the best people for the job.

Simone writes an article which employs a number of intellectually corrupt devices to build her premise of pushing more women into particular fields. One of them is using Leukaemia Survivor, 7 year old Madeleine who said women can do anything. Well that's quite wrong. Men can't do anything, nor can women. Some men & women can do things that others can't. Madeleine wants to grow up to be a Scientist. Her only barrier to reaching that career goal will not be her confidence or goal setting, but whether she passes the appropriate exams when she's looking for tertiary admission and to complete university. There's no gender barrier here. Its a heart string attached straw man thing...

Its also quite noticeable Ms McGurk never talks about gender equality in other particularly male dominated fields. Nothing about shoring up gender equality in brick laying, truck driving, plumbing or any other trade based field or labouring. SHE ONLY FOCUSES ON HIGH PAID WHITE COLLAR OCCPATIONS, ABSOLUTELY NO REFERENCE TO MANUAL LABOUR AT ALL.
Yes executive roles, CEOs in ASX firms are cited, numbers in Parliament...but nothing about too many women & not enough men in nursing or on check out tills, or too many men in ditches, in heavy equipment, welding or fitting a roof to house or brick paving...zero.
Why, because not many women apply for these jobs, if they do they'd soon have to be as profitable to keep on as the average labourer. There is no gender refusal scheme happening. There's few women because firstly there's very few applying.

I know lady sparkies, mechanics, shearers, truckies and some labourers out in the sun & the heat on the tools. They didn't get the job because they were female. They didn't get the job because the firm needed females. They got the jobs because despite how few women ever apply, they were qualified and more than able of being good at their job...like any successful male who picked up a job in the same company or the same field. 
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EQUAL OPPORTUNITY.

I'm not sure why the gender bias is heralded as some thing that has to be fixed. Best person for the job irrespective of their gender is what I thought it should be all about. Their merit, not their gender.

Equal Outcomes, the Socialist answer means, just get 50% women in there as quick as possible, whatever it takes. That's quotarising the workplace and merit suffers.

I think we have to push to applicants and employers that it has to be 100% EQUAL OPPORTUNITY, best merit gets the job, not what will lead to a predetermined "balance"

Oddly many Social Justice Warrior type Socialists are hell bent on transgender people being regarded as the gender they choose and we all have to accept it.

Well if we follow that equally stupid premise we just need half the members of parliament to declare they "self-identify" as female (whether they are or not) and we'll have proper gender balance.

Simone has a long way to go before she's a half decent MP...and its not because of her gender. The Perth Socialist Party (WALabor) must have picked her because she was all about spruiking equal outcomes and NOT equal opportunity & merit.

 

Such is the Socialist was.

If all Socialists understood Socialism, there'd be no Socialism nor any bizarre & intellectually bankrupt "equality" screamers.