The information which one can obtain from your local member can be instructive. One of our supporters wrote to his local member asking about recent cuts to dairy prices and potential assistance to the industry. The letter, in part, said:
“I referred specifically to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) Agreement on Subsidies and Countervailing Measures (Articles 3 and 5) and the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (Article 13 and Annex 2).
These agreements prohibit governments from providing subsidies or direct assistance to businesses which can then influence the export performance of a product, or preference domestic over imported products.”

So, a 50 c/L levy on milk, that would save our local dairy farmers, would breach these agreements. But, other nations only give a nodding glance at these agreements, which are basically only for the West to hold to, so both hands are tied behind our backs. It does not take long surfing the net to find vast literature on Chinese protectionism of industry and agriculture. Even Obama accused China of protecting its car industry, contrary to WTO dictates. Indeed, much industry in China is based on the communist state-run enterprises, so there is not even a sharp distinction between public and private, which is presupposed by the WTO documents.
These WTO Trade Agreements and other agreements such as the TPP are a recipe for Australian economic suicide.

Perhaps I am just being my optimistic self, but I observe just a little bit more caution from some of the leading journalists at The Australian, especially over the Chinese bid for the NSW electricity network – a sale which is still potentially open to the Chinese as attempts are made to jump over security concerns. (The Australian, August 19, 2016, p. 2) Of course, Asianisation first; security second.

This sale is of an asset and is not an investment which builds a new business. Thus, the Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens (The Australian, August 17, 2016, p. 1), has recently warned against this sort of foreign investment, which is pushing up the value of the Australian dollar.
Stevens said: “Foreign capital that builds new assets – like some of the capital that funded the mining boom – that’s one thing. Foreign capital that buys up the existing assets, I’m not saying that we should be closed to that, but that’s not creating new capital for the country. That’s just altering the allocation of who owns the capital that’s here now".

 The Human Rights Commission is seeking to have the public prevented from commenting on an inquiry into their handling of the University student race-hate case. (The Australian, August 8, 2016, p.5) The commission submitted that it would not be appropriate to consider submissions from the public.

That, I think, is the best argument which one can give for the dissolving of the Human Rights Commission.

Although I seldom agree with The Australian's "editor-at-large", Paul Kelly, his article "Race, Gender: The Risk of Identity Politics" (The W.E. Australian, August 6-7, 2016, p.15), raises issues that conservatives have become too afraid to address. In fact Kelly does talk about the question of "weakness":

"This movement proves the ideological creativity of the Left, the manipulative power of human rights law and the perversion of the idea of justice - seen in this country in Section 18 C of the Racial Discrimination Act where individuals can (initiate) legal action because they are "offended" by others".

An interesting article, worth noting is by Michael Sexton, “Telling Argument Against Dissenting Perspectives,” The Australian, August 16, 2016, p. 12.
Sexton says that the politically correct class in Australia is extremely powerful and rules the public agendas and debates, tolerating little dissent.
It champions same-sex marriage, section 18 C, sees Australia as deeply racist, and believes in human-caused climate change, all with the passion of a religion.

We can add to this list; such that Australia is a part of Asia,  and a fanatical support for multi-culturalism/multi-racialism and mass migration, and the array of Aboriginal issues.

The “Trump apocalypse” is a term I use to describe what will happen when Hillary Clinton is inevitably elected president of the United States in November, and the political fallout that will come from it.
There are, of course many who believe that Trump will triumph, such as exhibited by a recent turnabout by former critic Brad Thor (“Rethinking the #NeverTrump Position,” August 16, 2016, at http://hotair.com/archives/2016/08/16/brad-thor-rethinking-the-nevertrump-position/.)
Hillary is a “cancer drug” which will kill the US; the Trump-drug may also kill the US, but it may also slow the cancer down.

David Cole at Taki Mag (“My God, What if He Loses?” August 18, 2016, at http://takimag.com/article/my_god_what_if_he_loses_david_cole/print#axzz4I0higTGG0,  expresses doubt that Trump could win. He interviews some Alternative thinkers, who are also concerned. The polls for Trump look bad, Cole argues, and the polls are usually right. Yes, sure, like they were right about Brexit; all polls indicated a defeat, and look where that went. And not all polls, if any, can be trusted at all, indicate that Trump is losing.

The proposed reforms to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act suggested by Judge Ron Sackville ('Align 18C with community standards: judge', The Australian, 20-21/8) are not a satisfactory defence of free speech on race.

Firstly, there is no need to balance freedom of speech with retention of 'an effective armoury against racial hatred'. Such a retention is a significant and unacceptable inhibition on true freedom of speech, because of the range of interpretations to which the phrase 'racial hatred' is subject.

Australian businesses with close ties to China donated $5.5m to political parties, investigation shows

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-21/australian-groups-strong-ties-china-political-donations/7768012

The disastrous visitation imposed on Australian Dairy-farmers was not unexpected.
It has been building up for many years and if you had been following the trends it was inevitable although its final form unknown; invariably it would be accompanied by misery and hardship for honest hard-working Australians.

The number of cows needed to remain a viable business has increased year by year pushed by costs arising from outside the farm boundary. In the beginning it was relatively easy to milk a few more cows or plant a couple more acres of crop. It was akin to a raging fire under the steam-boiler and adding more weight to the pressure relief valve.

All of the increased costs are induced by State and Federal Governments who automatically increase their taxes and charges by the annual inflation rate and this flows right through the community.
Added to this are local government rates and charges; have you ever known rates to be reduced? Capping council rates is another weight on the ‘pressure valve’.
Whenever there is a tariff review or references to the Productivity Commission, it always means increased costs whether it is energy (power and fuel), water for irrigation, etcetera. Farmers cannot pass these costs on to somebody else.

To offer farmers’ loans at concessional interest rates is also an inane response when the total rural debt carried by a diminishing number of farmers is rising each year.
It is not sustainable and will lead to ever more hardship and misery spread throughout the entire population of Australia with the only exemptions the few who live in ‘ivory towers’ who are insulated from the results of their decisions; it is time for a change!

The nub of the problem lies with the financial system and inherent inflationary policies emanating from our Parliaments. The Reserve Bank is a creature of the Parliament and is charged with ‘managing Australia’s Finance’. (Ask your elected Member for a copy of the Reserve Bank Act 1959)

Inflation should NOT BE MANAGED BUT ELIMINATED, and it can be!
This was effectively done during World War II and you can find references in the Australian Year Book, Number 37, 1946-47, beginning page 458.
Chapter XII, Labour Wages and Prices. Section C. Control of Prices during and since the 1939-45 War.

An inquiry into the Financial System needs to be undertaken but not lead by the wolves, (bankers and economists) instructing the foxes (elected politicians) how to manage the lambs and chickens (Australian Public).

It is the Parliament that should be instructing the ‘financial managers’ to implement policies in the best interests of the Australian people or terminate their employment; they must be judged on their performance which at present is wanting.
This also applies to the elected politicians who would rather yield to external foreign and financial interests before serving their constituents.

In the final analysis it comes down to the voting patterns of you, the Australian Voter … when will you wake up?
Louis Cook, Numurkah, Victoria

Some press references for your interest follow …

Most of us are aware that Senator Cory Bernardi has an on-line petition, "Free Speech Petition" at http://www.corybernardi.com/18c_petition.

The petition seeks for parliament to remove the most troubling words from section 18 C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the words being "offend" and "insult". This would still leave the words "humiliate" and "intimidate" in the section, which would operate as before.

Is this a step forward, or this this managed dissent?
The answer is: both. It is a step forward, as eliminating these words would knock down almost all of the problematic cases from the Bolt case to the University student ones. It is thus worth supporting for that reason.

However, there is weighty opinion that has been made repeatedly in The Australian by legal commentators, that the entire section needs to go. A good book arguing for more comprehensive reforms, especially to defences, is No Offence Intended: Why Section 18 C is Wrong (2016).

I think the presently "offended" ethnics will only now claim that they are "humiliated." There is only a thin line between being offended and being humiliated, and today, all those offended will say that they are also humiliated, and naturally intimidated, because the bar is very low in the politically correct landscape.

Democracy Needs Divine Intervention
In 1887 the Scottish history Professor Alexander Tytler, at Edinburgh University, speaking about the fall of the Athenian Republic some 2000 years earlier, (was attributed to have said-ed) the average age of the world's greatest civilisations from the beginning of history has been about 200 years.

"During those 200 years these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
from bondage to spiritual faith,
from spiritual faith to great courage,
from Courage to Liberty,
from liberty to abundance,
from abundance to complacency,
from complacency to apathy,
from apathy to dependence,
from dependence back into bondage".

The essence of free speech is the ability of a person to be able to publicly express an opinion, informed or otherwise, true or false, on matters of local, national and international importance, without hindrance. Defenders of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, such as Meredith Doig, President of the Rationalist Society of Australia Inc. (‘Dealing with the contentious matter of 18C’, Sydney Morning Herald, 25/8) decline to uphold this ideal and produce specious arguments to justify their position.

There is no obligation on government whatever to ‘balance’ liberty against ‘equality’. The latter is an arithmetical term foolishly invoked to mask the agendas of interested parties. Equity is the appropriate term to use; and it does not collide with the defence of intellectual freedom.

The Federal government spending on Indigenous affairs is an astonishing $5.9 billion a year, but most of this money is failing to help Aborigines, according to a report published by the Centre for Independent Studies. (The Australian, August 23, 2016, p.1) The study found that less than 10 percent of 1082 programmes had been subjected to proper evaluation to determine their effectiveness.

The 1082 programmes are “just the tip of the iceberg.” And the figure will increase once non-indigenous NG0 spending in the indigenous sector, and university spending is added, which would add billions.

A recent delightful story of childhood resourcefulness and intelligence was published in The Australian (August 22, 2016, p. 15), “Saved by Dr Google.” A 13-year-old contracted a serious illness that devastated her, putting her in a hospital bed. Doctors did numerous tests, and concluded that she had a severe cause of chronic fatigue syndrome. However, she spent her time researching on the internet and eventually discovered a research paper describing a girl with the same condition as her: pandysautonomia.

While this is all incredible, if one goes to Google and researches pandysautonomia one will find that it is a rare auto-immune autonomic neuropathy, and has occurred in cases of girls receiving the HPV (cervical cancer) vaccine. Although the probability of this effect may be low, this little girl could not have anticipated that her body would have responded in this way. Hence, given the probability of such catastrophic health effects, even if low in probability, people should have the right of choice regarding vaccines, and not be beaten by the Centrelink whip.

Jennifer Oriel (“Get Up and Be More Transparent, Mr Soros.” The Australian, August 22, 2016, p. 12) comments on the hacking of George Soros’ files. The socialist billionaire has been shown in these files to have actively used his transnational network to put pressure on governments for mass migration and open borders and to target individuals criticising Islam. He acted, through his Open Society Foundation, to undermine politicians from the Right.

In general: “Soros-affiliated organisations follow a well-worn political and rhetorical strategy updated for the digital age. Like the socialists and communists of old, they attack liberal democracy by delegitimising the classically liberal values of individualism, free speech, logical argumentation and public reason. They attack democratic states by advocating a porous border policy, reframing illegal immigrants as refugees and degrading critics of totalitarian tendencies such as Islamism in orchestrated campaigns of pc censorship.”

Here’s the question: Did large Chinese companies, in league with their government, deliberately intend to harm the New Zealand and Australian economies by stockpiling products, in order to then purchase devalued land and commodities at a cut rate?

For several years, there have been whispers in New Zealand that farmers are becoming “tenants in their own land.” As Chinese companies move in more and more, carving out and buying for themselves swathes of New Zealand farmland (and Australian, too), those concerns are growing louder.
We New Zealanders are few in number but have slogged it out over the past century and a half to become the largest dairy exporter on Earth—sending out 95 percent of our product. Our dairy industry is critical to our economy. The livelihood of our country depends, to a great deal, on how well our farms do. Judging by what has been happening of late, that’s not so well at all.

Everyone knows that I am the bad-tempered and pessimistic one at this site. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Could this entire self-help cult of positive thinking actually be wrong?
An article by Zaria Gorvett, “Why it pays to be Grumpy and Bad-Tempered” August 10, 2016, puts the case against the self-help ideology. Cynics actually have more stable marriages, higher earnings and live longer. Cranks turn out to often be superior at negotiating.

Good moods and optimism comes at a cost. It can make one gullible and blind to problems that the pessimist, one who is sceptical about human goodness, will pick up on in a flash. The fact is, our emotions, including the so-called negative ones, evolved with mankind, and have survival value. Anger, even hatred, can in various circumstances, save one’s life. Psychological experiments testing the ability of anger versus sadness in creativity have found that anger wins hands down as it “prepares the body to mobilise resources.”

I will let you in on a little secret, since there is just you and me and no-one else listening in – I have a morbid interest in the so-called grand conspiracy theory that the super-elites are planning to wipe out most of the human race. I, of course, don’t believe this, but the case has been put by excited folk on the internet. Usually they take out of context the words of high-flyers such as Bill Gates, about the need to reduce human population numbers, and say that he is advocating some plan of high tech genocide, probably using vaccines: https://archive.org/details/WipeOutHumans-BillGates-VaccinesArebestWayToDepopulatePlanet.

I grant, as my mother has documented in article after article at this site, that vaccines have negative consequences. But I seriously doubt whether anyone attempting to genocide the world would choose such a slow method, where genetically engineered diseases, such as a new strain of super-small pox, would take out 95 percent of humanity overnight.
So, I’m sorry; I dislike Bill Gates as much as the next man and his dog, but I just don’t follow my fellow conspiracy theorists in seeing him pursuing that agenda.