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MEDIA RELEASE: Palaszczuk government must get kids back to school with no delay

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The Palaszczuk government must get kids back to school with no delay to keep their future safe.

Palaszczuk will delay the start of the school term by two weeks on the back of health advice claiming the omicron wave will peak at the end of January, similar to advice at the start of the pandemic that pandemic restrictions would only last two weeks to flatten the curve.

Over the past month government has rapidly shifted gear in what they say but not what they do. They say we need  to live with the virus, but prove with the cancellation of schools that they are unwilling to do so.

The government is unwilling to give up control, again relying on secret “health advice” to throw parents everyday lives into chaos and hamstring students who have already suffered with years of disrupted learning.

Parents know that the logistical nightmare of not being ready for remote learning is detrimental compared to having their kids in school at a proper learning environment.

We hold the formative years of a child’s life sacred for a reason, sometimes you don’t get a second chance at them. There is no reason to mandate either students or their teachers to receive COVID vaccines.

Many teachers know this, which is likely why over 20,000 of them reportedly won’t be returning to work this year after the Palaszczuk government mandated injections for them and they were sacked or resigned.

Palaszczuk claims this is about safety. It’s not. The premier is trading short-term pretend safety for the long-term detriment of our children’s lives and learning journey to try to get Labor elected.

I’m calling on the Premier to drop the mandates, return kids to school without delay and live with the virus as politicians have promised us.

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Protecting Female Athletes – Transgender Women in Sport

Participation in sport is a right for everyone.  We know sport is great for our physical health, and for our social, emotional and mental health.   Australia is a great nation of sports watchers and participants.  Next month the world looks forward to the Olympics and this year there will be some fierce debate centred on some of the women’s sporting competitions.  Namely those events with transgender females who are competing in female sports.

A transgender female is someone born male and then makes a decision to live as a female.  To assist their transition they will take sex hormones and have surgery.  Some transgender females now want to compete in women’s sport and that brings an immense challenge.  At the Olympics the stakes are high. The training, carried out over many years, will have meant enormous sacrifice and to be pipped at the post by a biological man in a women’s sporting event just doesn’t seem fair.  

It may seem inclusive, but is it fair?  The IOC have stated “There’s considerable tension between the notions of fairness and inclusion, and the desire and need to protect the women’s category.” 

What does this male advantage look like?  Let’s quantify it.  When males go through puberty they gain physiological  advantages such as higher lung capacity, increased blood flow and greater bone strength.  These advantage don’t diminish completely after a gender transition.  In the final analysis a man is on average 7% taller and 13% larger.  Women on average have only 66% of male lower body strength and 52% of male upper body strength.

At Olympic level, the pinnacle for any athlete, the difference between male and females world records are around 10% – across sprinting, distance and strength events.

Transgender women don’t always win, but a women will probably need to work even harder to win in her category.  But the odds are tipped towards the transgender woman.  In the US in 2017 and 2018, a transgender female won a high school track championships in the 55m, 100m, 200m and 300m events.  Her closest and only real competitor was also a transgender female.

Some argue that sports is never an equal playing field and there are always inherent advantages in some people and disadvantages with others.  While that may accurate putting biological men up against women is “not fair play”, nor is it safe play.  

Everyone has a right to compete and participate and we need a solution that takes biology into account.  Maybe our best outcomes is a women’s category and an open category.  That way sport is inclusive, safe and fair.

Available on these platforms:

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Transgender woman says children must wait before irreversible surgery

Western countries are experiencing an explosion of gender dysphoria in our children. Historically incidences of gender dysphoria were small and larger with preschool boys, yet the explosion in recent years has been in our teenage girls.

This significant change remains largely unexplained.

There are two pathways to support these children. The therapeutic pathway and the medical pathway. It is surprising and worrying that many children are opting for the medical pathway, which includes experimental puberty blockers, hormones and irreversible surgery. All bring life long consequences.

Available on these platforms:

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One Nation wins Senate Motion banning Critical Race Theory for kids

UPDATE 19 August 2021

The Government has told ACARA, the Curriculum Authority in Australia, to re-write the draft curriculum. We thank Minister Tudge for listening to the criticism, including from myself, on what was an obviously deficient draft curriculum

This follows One Nation’s motions in the Senate criticising the de-emphasis of our Judaeo-Christian heritage and the inclusion of critical race theory in the draft curriculum.

Read Full Story (click here)

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority must rewrite draft curriculum: Alan Tudge

From Rebecca Urban | The Australian

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/australian-curriculum-assessment-and-reporting-authority-must-rewrite-draft-curriculum-alan-tudge/news-story/d2e0c0e1a824b3f1ce8652c0c0d18806

Education Minister Alan Tudge says the board of the country’s schooling authority must substantially rewrite its draft national curriculum, warning he will not endorse the proposed document amid concern student outcomes would be harmed.

Writing to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority’s acting chairman Norm Hart, Mr Tudge criticised the proposal for supporting “ideology over evidence” and presenting an “overly negative view” of the nation in the study of history and civics.

In the letter, seen by The Australian, Mr Tudge urged the board to seriously consider recent feedback from education experts, who have flagged concerns that the proposed changes amounted to a weakening of learning standards.

“Some of these groups, such as Australia’s peak mathematics association, believe that the current draft will take Australian kids backwards,” he wrote. “If the current draft is simply tweaked, it will not be supported. It needs fundamental changes.”

The warning comes as the ACARA board meets on Thursday and Friday to discuss feedback to the highly anticipated update of the Australian Curriculum – an important document laying out what students are expected to learn across the mandated subject areas of English, maths, science, the arts, humanities, health and physical education and languages.

The curriculum also seeks to cover general capabilities, or skills, such as critical and creative thinking, as well as ensure young people develop an understanding of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories and cultures. Its release in April, however, sparked a torrent of criticism, including from high-profile historians, academics and reading specialists.

Among the most scathing criticism was from the Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute, whose membership spans leading universities, government agencies and industry, which called for any ongoing review of the maths curriculum to be halted pending further consultation.

The institute was particularly critical of a proposed push towards having students learn maths by engaging in open-ended problem-solving activities, noting that “mastery of mathematical approaches is needed before student problem-solving can be effective”.

Under way for more than a year, ACARA’s curriculum review was launched in the wake of Australia’s declining performance on the OECD’s PISA, which has shown that Australian students have gone backwards in reading, maths and science over the past 20 years.

According to Mr Tudge, the curriculum should seek to be ambitious on students’ learning outcomes and should prioritise evidence-based practices, particularly in reading and maths.

“However, to my great frustration, evidence-based practices have not been consistently embedded in your current draft,” he said. “There is still too much emphasis on whole-language learning of reading and insufficient emphasis on phonics.

“Thirty years ago, determining the best way to teach reading may have been a legitimate debate, but it is not now. The evidence is crystal clear … that the teaching of phonics is vital.”

The minister also urged the ACARA board to re-examine the draft history and civics curriculum to ensure that it provided a balanced teaching of Australia’s liberal democracy that has made the nation attractive to millions of migrants.

“Your draft, however, diminishes Australia’s western, liberal, and democratic values,” Mr Tudge said. “The overarching impression from the curriculum is that the main feature of western civilisation is slavery, imperialism and colonisation.

“Important historical events are removed or reframed, such as the emphasis on invasion theory over Australia Day. Even Anzac Day is presented as a contested idea, rather than the most sacred of all days where we honour the millions of men and women who have served in war, and the 100,000 who gave their lives for our freedom.”

Referencing the coronavirus pandemic, Mr Tudge said the education system had “been shaken in the last 18 months … in ways we had never imagined”.

“I believe that the best way to serve the interests of our young people now is to seize every opportunity to lift educational standards,” he said.

“The draft of the Australian Curriculum is such an opportunity.”

Remember what critical race theory is? It says that the whole of our society is infected with racism and it only helps whites, that you can only succeed if you’re white and if you’re anything else you can’t succeed which is a shocking message.

Transcript

[Paul Murray] Let’s talk to one of the Senators who was in the chamber for that nonsense in and around coal but I want to talk more so about his success in being able to get the Senate to agree to keep critical race theory, the crazy stuff all about teaching white people to hate themselves including the video we showed you a bit earlier in it day. Malcolm Roberts is the One Nation Senator from here in beautiful Queensland. Lovely to be here and I’m sure you would prefer to be in Gladstone rather than Canberra now mate but alas that’s the gig you have. Tell us how important was this vote and what message does it send about critical race theory in the national school curriculum?

[Malcolm Roberts] Let’s help everyone to understand what critical race theory is. It says that – it claims that everything, every aspect, the whole of our society is infected with racism and it only helps whites so what it does is it says that you can only succeed if you’re white and if you’re anything else you can’t succeed which is a shocking message but what it also does is infects all whites – kids in particular – with guilt and shame. What they’re doing, Paul — with guilt and shame, and what they’re doing is using critical race theory to indoctrinate our kids, telling them what to think not how to think and that is what’s so damaging about it. Our kids are our productive capacity in the future and they’re killing off our productive capacity.

[Paul Murray] It is extraordinary to me that a country that has been able to achieve so much including in a multiracial fashion has been able to be the story of immigration from all over the world has been one of the great successes of Australia yet for some reason reason all of the people who want to sit in the modernity is only possible because of the great rise of the West who want to use their position in the power structure of the West to somehow say there is something fundamentally wrong with the system that pay their wages or think something like critical race theory is worth implementing via their jobs.

[Malcolm Roberts] You just nailed it. At the core of this it is about control and reveals an extremely arrogant approach. These people who are pushing this nonsense, they don’t want to get into parliament and go through the work of being elected, putting their policies and their ideas under scrutiny. They just want to get in through the back door and then they want to use their power over innocent kids. I mean, there’s nothing more shameful than that. They don’t want to have any scrutiny. They just want to work through the back door ideology. What they use, Paul, as you know, is they use shaming language to silence any dissent because if you go against it, mate, you’re a racist and there’s nothing worse than calling someone a racist and that’s what they do. It is all about control and getting control of the future of our kids. Don’t go through parliament, fight to change and enact laws, just bypass it all and indoctrinate the kids. It’s frightening stuff.

[Paul Murray] Thank goodness you are there to fight it and congrats on getting the Senate to see sense on this stuff. Well done and it is one of the many reasons I’m glad you and Pauline are in the parliament.

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Opposing gender surgery in children is not transphobic

One Nation DOES NOT support children having irreversible, elective medical procedures before they can even vote and before therapeutic treatment such as counselling is applied. That stance is not transphobic, as much as the greens want to pretend it is.

Transcript

One Nation does not support this motion, as it misrepresents the intentions behind One Nation’s stance on protecting our children. All children, including those who present with gender dysphoria, have a right to therapeutic and medical care. Therapeutic care is underutilised for children presenting with gender dysphoria. Children should not be put on a medical pathway with irreversible outcomes. It is not helpful to all children who need support to label everyone who disagrees with Senator Rice’s world view as being transphobic. That will never address the anguish that these children and parents face. It will suppress alternative views. It is subtle censorship based on trying to shame people whose views differ. One Nation supports an inclusive approach because we do not carve out special groups to protect at the expense of others. Inclusiveness starts with a state of mind, and a thousand variations on a man and a woman will never include everyone as long as there are those who choose to identify as a victim first.

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MEDIA RELEASE: Senate fails to protect children from irreversible transgender surgery

In the Senate today the Coalition has split over whether Australian children should access irreversible transgender treatments. 

 

The Government granted their Senators a conscience vote on the motion brought by One Nation Senator Roberts and it is the first conscience vote on a motion since 1987.

 

Senator Roberts said, “The Liberals call themselves conservatives and today we have seen five liberal senators, including ministers, cross the floor to support Australian children accessing irreversible treatments and surgery.

 

“My motion was about protecting children from these irreversible treatments at a time when a therapeutic pathway should take precedence over a medical pathway.

 

“It’s a travesty when we let children under 16 years have double mastectomies in Australia”, he said.

 

Sweden’s leading gender clinic has recently ended routine treatment of children with puberty blockers and hormonal drugs citing concerns around cancer and infertility.  In Australia children as young as 10 years of age have been prescribed puberty blockers.  

 

“It’s a sad day for all Liberal voters when their leader in the Senate, Simon Birmingham, crosses the floor and aligns himself with Labor and the Greens against the true conservatives in his party.

 

“The gang of five must be called to account for their sellout of conservative liberal values. These are Senators Birmingham, Hume, Payne, Bragg and Colbeck.”

 

Speaking after the vote Senator Roberts said, “Adolescence is a confusing time and this is not the time for our children to make irreversible life changing decisions.

 

“It is no wonder that the Australian curriculum is loaded with anti-humanist, ideological rubbish when the former Minister for Education voted against my motion to protect children.

 

“Shame on him,” he said.

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