Watering Australia's Intellectual Deserts

If what happened at RMIT University in Melbourne last week was a one-off event, it could be laughed at as the behaviour of a single rogue academic.

But the pity is that the actions of a senior lecturer in mechanical engineering at RMIT University, Hormoz Marzbani, neatly encapsulates the intellectual crisis at Australia's universities.  Our universities now engage in partisan politics and ideological barracking not disinterested intellectual inquiry.

Marzbani informed his students that if they attended the climate strike, they would be awarded full marks for that day's assessment.  The students' work requirement was "All you need to do is email me a group selfie in the crowd".  Helpfully Marzbani enclosed with his message the details for the time and location of the strike.

The administration of RMIT University, in response to media inquiries, replied:  "While the teacher has determined that the conversation at today's global climate strike is educational and relevant to the learning for this project, RMIT will of course be looking at the decision to ensure that assessment integrity is maintained."

Marzbani is only a senior lecturer.  At the University of Melbourne, John Prins is a professor and head of its medical school.  Last week he wrote to students saying they were "encouraged to consider joining with staff" at the climate strike.  Marzbani and Prins occupy positions of trust and respect — positions they're willing to misuse.

At universities a few levels up from professors are vice-chancellors.  Earlier this week, it was revealed that Sandra Harding AO, the Vice-Chancellor of James Cook University in Townsville, has authorised the university to appeal against the decision of the Federal Circuit Court that found that in 2018 the university had unlawfully dismissed its professor of physics, Peter Ridd.  The university was ordered to pay $1.2 million in damages and penalties.  Ridd had questioned the evidence upon which other scientists had based their opinion that the Great Barrier Reef was dying.

For its appeal, JCU has engaged one of the country's leading barristers, Sydney-based Bret Walker, SC, to argue that Ridd as a university employee was not entitled to freedom of academic enquiry.  What JCU is paying Walker and its two other barristers is as yet unknown.  What is known is that someone of Walker's ilk can command fees of $20,000 a day.  It is also known from a freedom-of-information request that until April, JCU had already spent more than $630,000 in legal expenses on the case.  JCU's legal bill is paid by taxpayers.  Ridd's legal expenses are paid from his own pocket and from donations via an online public appeal.

Lest it be thought that these three examples all relate only to climate change and that intolerance of differing viewpoints doesn't extend to other fields of academic endeavour, the evidence says otherwise.  After an outcry from its staff, the Australian National University spurned an offer of funding from the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation to provide the sort of undergraduate course that up until a few years ago would have been regarded as completely unexceptional.

Australia's university students are beginning to realise what's happening because they see it in class every day.  According to a survey of 500 students commissioned from independent market research company Dynata, 31 per cent of respondents have been made to feel uncomfortable by their university teacher for expressing an opinion.  Even more damning, 58 per cent of students feel they are more exposed to new ideas on social media than at university.

Before too long Australia's universities could be hit by another crisis — a financial one.

In 2017, 27 per cent of students enrolled in Australian universities were from overseas and 32 per cent of those students were from China.  Analysis by the Centre for Independent Studies reveals at that at University of Sydney, Chinese students account for more than 20 per cent of the university's revenue.  Many would argue such a revenue model is unsustainable and that short-term economic profit has taken priority over the maintenance of quality.

Australia's universities need to keep in mind that when institutions are in crisis one of two things happens.

Institutions reform or they die.

Two Days In Bankstown Won't Change The ABC's Elitist Culture

The ABC is going to Bankstown.  That's right.  In a bizarre move that highlights how insular the organisation has become, ABC chairwoman Ita Buttrose and managing direction David Anderson will join dozens of staff for a two-day visit to the Sydney suburb 17 kilometres from its Ultimo HQ.

As the Nine Network's tabloids reported last week, staff will engage in a planning workshop focused on making content that is more relevant to average Australians, discuss local issues, eat at local restaurants and speak with community groups.

This could be viewed as the ABC making a genuine effort to get in touch with part of the Australian community that it is failing to represent.  But the fact that Australia's national broadcaster needs to organise a special excursion to visit a suburb that is almost as distant as what the last Census found was the average Sydney car commute says all you need to know about how insular and out of touch the ABC has become.

This is an organisation that employs thousands of journalists, producers and other staff around the country.  It's an organisation with supporters who claim its existence is vital to Australian democracy.  Yet it is now so disconnected from mainstream Australia that it has begun treating people who live less than 20 kilometres away as akin to a foreign population that must be studied in their native environment.

It's this disconnect that explains why so many Australians view the ABC as biased and out-of-touch.

ABC journalists don't lack professionalism or integrity.  They don't wilfully ignore the ABC's obligation "to ensure that the gathering and presentation ... of news and information is accurate and impartial according to the recognized standards of objective journalism".  On the contrary, most ABC journalists are committed to these standards.

But they fail to uphold them because they are in a bubble.  They are surrounded by colleagues who live in the same inner-city suburbs, who have the same perspectives and opinions on everything from politics and culture to science and religion.  Not only that.  They often hire their own — spouses, partners and children — because they know how the organisation works.  They are simply unaware that the views of ABC staff aren't an accurate reflection of the wider community.

This is the perfect recipe for groupthink.  It breeds an insular and sometimes arrogant culture that treats views outside the prevailing progressive perspective as illegitimate.

Of course not all examples of ABC bias can be ascribed to groupthink.  The ongoing ban on my appearing on its daily panel show The Drum is one example that is obviously the result of an editorial decision — at the time of writing it has been over 520 days since I appeared on the program.

But most can be, and a few short trips to the outer suburbs of our major capital cities isn't going to change a thing.

If the ABC really wants to appeal to a larger audience then it should hire staff who disagree with the prevailing soft-left bias that is so clearly detectable in its coverage.

Earlier this year it seemed the ABC might finally have a chairwoman intent on taking this approach, with Buttrose telling ABC Radio in March that the ABC "could do with more diversity of views" because "sometimes I think, people without really knowing it, let a bias show through."

But Buttrose has since done an about-face and indicated that she has no intention of hiring conservatives who don't fit with the prevailing ABC culture.

In a recent interview with One Plus One host Jane Hutcheon, Ms Buttrose was asked whether Scott Morrison had told her that the ABC needed more Andrew Bolts or Miranda Devines.  She responded by saying she didn't think Andrew Bolt would be a good fit for the ABC (evidently things have changed since Bolt was a co-host on Jon Faine's 774 Conversation Hour, and spent a decade as a regular panellist on Insiders).

Ms Buttrose also clarified that what she wanted was for the ABC to become culturally diverse, so that it better reflected the diversity she saw when she visited school playgrounds as Australian of the year.  Presumably, this means she wants more racial, ethnic, and gender diversity, but not diversity of opinion.

There is no reason why Andrew Bolt, in particular, should be hired by the ABC.  As his column on Sunday made clear, he has no plans of leaving News Corp.

But the fact that Andrew Bolt wouldn't be a good cultural fit for the ABC is exactly why the ABC needs more mainstream conservatives like Andrew Bolt.

Having a more racial, ethnic, and gender diverse staff is all well and good, but it will do nothing to help the ABC create content that is more relevant to average Australians — not if the new staff share all the same views and opinions as the current staff.  This will simply prolong the disconnect between the ABC and the mainstream Australians that it is failing to represent.

The ABC's culture isn't going to change while it is protected from market forces by lavish taxpayer funding.  Ideally, it should be privatised.  But at the very least it should be made more accountable to the people who fund it — Australian taxpayers.

This could be done by giving taxpayers a simple choice of whether they fund the ABC, all it would require is a box for people to tick when they submit their tax returns.  Taxpayers who see value in the ABC could choose to fund it while taxpayers who it is out of touch could choose to not.

Given how vital the ABC is for the preservation of Australian democracy — as its supporters so often claim — the vast majority of Australians will no doubt happily tick the box and the impact on the ABC's budget will be negligible.  Such a small drop in funding could easily be covered by donations or other revenue streams.

Of course, if the ABC isn't quite as popular as its supporters claim — if a large number of people think it is arrogant and out of touch, for example — then it just might give them an incentive to change.  It surely has a better chance of success than a two-day visit to Bankstown.

Come Visit The Reef With Me, Misha Ketchell

Fundamental to the scientific method is the assumption that reality exists independently of our belief systems;  that there is such a thing as evidence, and that it matters.

Misha Ketchell, is the editor of the popular academic publication The Conversation, has been quoted claiming to care so much about the evidence that the opinions of "sceptics" must be excluded when it comes to climate change.  But if Ketchell really cares about the evidence, he will immerse himself in it:  he will come with me to see what the consensus claims are the worse affected corals at the Great Barrier Reef — and find instead a beautiful coral garden.

Indeed, if Ketchell really cares about nature and evidence, he will be prepared to test his claims against objective reality.

I've been labelled a climate change sceptic and contrarian.  Indeed, I'm listed in, of all places, the journal Nature as a dangerous dissident who must be shunned, and denied because, it is claimed, that I misrepresent the evidence.

If my arguments are so devoid of evidence, this should be easily proven.  One way of finding the truth is through simple observation.

If we have catastrophic sea level rises, for example, then this should be evident when we visit the beach.  If the Great Barrier Reef is in decline, this should be everywhere evident with the corals.

Coral reefs in shallow waters adjacent to the Australian mainland are considered particularly susceptible to coral bleaching, and also smothering by sediment from turbid water.

This was all lamented the week I was there in late August, including by Sussan Ley, the Federal Environment Minister.  Relying on a review of more than 1,000 reports by academics, she told the nation that the prognosis for the Great Barrier Reef, and particularly inshore reefs, is very poor.

One of the papers that helped shaped this opinion is by Tara Clark (and colleagues including David Wachenfeld, the Chief Scientist at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority) entitled "Historical photographs revisited:  A case study for dating and characterising recent loss of coral cover on the inshore Great Barrier Reef" published by Nature (DOI: 10.1038/srep19285).

The historical photographs were taken circa 1890 and 1915 of corals in the vicinity of Stone Island, off Bowen, and they show healthy corals including species of the branching coral Acropora sp.

Clark, Wachenfeld and their colleagues concluded in the peer-reviewed paper published in 2016 that:

Using a combination of anecdotal, ecological and geochemical techniques, the results of this study provide a robust understanding of coral community change for Bramston Reef and Stone Island.  In the late 19th and early 20th Century, historical photographs revealed large and abundant living tabular Acropora sp. and massive faviid colonies at Bramston Reef and high cover of both plating and branching Acropora sp. colonies at Stone Island.  By contrast in 1994, no living Acropora colonies were found at either location and the majority of the large faviids that featured so prominently at Bramston Reef in c.1890 were dead, covered in algae and/or mud.

They continued:

In 2012 (eighteen years later), Bramston Reef was still characterized by many large faviid colonies, dead and overgrown by algae and sediment, as well as a large number of small living faviid colonies.  Yet there was evidence of some small increase in coral cover, primarily driven by tabular Acropora sp. and other genera.  In addition, living faviid colonies that appeared to be of equal size to their predecessors were also found in 2012, albeit scarc.  At Stone Island, the reef crest was similar to that observed in 1994 with a substrate almost completely devoid of living corals.

Yet when I visited Stone Island in late August, I was surprised to find an abundance of Acropora spp. forming both plate and branching colonies.

I saw and photographed large pink plate coral on August 25 — some more than one metre in diameter — at the reef edge just 30 metres from where Clark and co ended their transect as published in Nature.

There is dead coral, but this is not unusual in a fringing reef situation for the coral to continue to grow out from the island, with the healthiest corals at the edge.  This reef edge was often 20 metres wide and extended for perhaps two kilometres.

If the transects used in the Clark analysis had been extended by just 30 metres to the south they would have found a different story.  Rather the journal article gives the impression that the transect extended to the reef edge, when it did not.

Across the headland, in the northern-facing bay at Stone Island, was more coral and at this location, it covers more of the reef flat with an area of perhaps 25 hectares of almost 100 per cent coral cover.

This beautiful coral garden — with so many foliose and also branching hard corals — will be featured in a short film I'm making with underwater photographer Clint Hempsall.

The film not only includes spectacular underwater cinematography showing so many different species of soft and hard corals all at this one coral reef near the entrance to Bowen Harbour, but it also includes drone footage.  It is possible to get a good idea of the extent of a reef using a drone.  The film is entitled "Most corals are Beige".  But you can see from the underwater and aerial cinematography that there were also purple and some green corals at this reef.

Science is a method that relies on evidence.  That there is a beautiful coral garden existing as inshore reefs where the water is especially warm and turbid — not a kilometre from the Australian mainland at the entrance to a harbour — is hard to reconcile with the idea that we have catastrophic human-caused global warming.  It is impossible to reconcile with the published literature that claims these corals fringing Stone Island have been destroyed by climate change.

Science is never settled.  We must therefore always be open-minded, tolerant and ready to be proven wrong.

So I'm more than happy to take Misha Ketchell to Bowen, to test the evidence, in particular, this is an invitation to come with me and visit the fringing coral reefs at Stone Island.

Our Universities Have Caved In To Lazy Groupthink

In the lead-up to Friday's Global Climate Strike, enlightening emails have found their way into staff and student university in­boxes.  These communications are as illuminating as they are disheartening, as they once again reveal the extent to which our institutions of higher education have been captured by ideologically driven activists.

The array of carefully crafted messages that have been doing the rounds at Notre Dame, Queensland, NSW, La Trobe and Melbourne universities range from the subtle suggestion that staff may like to "accommodate" striking students, to robustly and actively encouraging students to ditch their studies and take to the streets to yell about climate change.

Without exception, all students have been informed that they will not be penalised for absenteeism and that there will be absolutely no repercussions for non-attendance.  This is completely at odds with standard university attendance requirements, which are markedly unforgiving.

Perhaps the most telling of all emails, however, has come from the desk of Stephen Trumble, head of the department of medical education at the University of Melbourne, who writes:  "All students are encouraged to consider joining with staff in participating in the Global Climate Strike on Friday 20th September.  The medical school supports sustainable development and mitigating the effects of climate change."

It seems that the priorities of Melbourne University's medical school are misguided.  Australians want doctors who are trained to diagnose and cure illness, not doctors who are trained to be eco­-warriors.  "One of our course outcomes," Trumble concludes, "is that Melbourne MD graduates should practise medicine in an environmentally sustainable manner so as not to contribute to this immediate problem."

One wonders whether this might look like a surgeon turning off the operating theatre lights and poking around inside the unfortunate patient by candlelight.

It smacks of ideological totalitarianism, where staff and students at our universities are being compelled to conform to the orthodoxy prevalent on campus.

The question is, what will become of the rebels who choose to go to class?  Their presence in the lecture theatres will single them out as dissidents and they will be judged accordingly as climate change deniers.  Never mind what they may think about climate change in private, their public inaction will condemn them in the eyes of their peers.

As it turns out, the same fate is awaiting those Victorian public servants who, rather than joining their colleagues on the streets of Melbourne, have chosen to remain at their desks.

Unsurprisingly, Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews, who this week achieved the honour of being the highest paid premier in the country, is encouraging his employees to ask for "flexible working arrangements" so they can help bring his city to a standstill.

Taxpayers are essentially paying public servants to take the day off.  It is unlikely that the Department of Premier and Cabinet would display the same degree of leniency towards staff if they were to down tools on a Friday afternoon to attend an anti-abortion rally.

What we are seeing on campus and indeed in government is the spirit of the mob at work.  This concept is explored by Douglas Murray in his latest book The Madness of Crowds:  Gender, Race and Identity.  "We are," he observes, "going through great crowd derangement.  In public and in private, both online and off, people are behaving in ways that are increasingly irrational, feverish, herd-like and simply unpleasant."

One of the most profound impacts that postmodernism and identity politics have had on our universities is the crippling of intellectual inquiry.  When universities are fiercely and repeatedly advocating diversity as a fundamental academic value, the reality is that diversity of opinion has been all but banished from many classrooms and lecture theatres, where the predominantly liberal-left world view, once concealed within the humanities, has become the wider orthodoxy.

The fact remains, students want diversity of opinion on campus.  In a recent survey of 500 domestic students commissioned from independent market research company Dynata, 82 per cent of respondents, no matter what their political persuasion, said university was a place where they should be exposed to different views, even if those views are challenging or offensive.  The results also showed that students were looking outside the university to be challenged or to find out alternative points of view, with 58 per cent of students saying they were more exposed to new ideas on social media than on campus.

Things must be dire indeed if students are finding greater diversity of opinion on the notoriously skewed platforms of Twitter or Facebook.

The Global Climate Strike shows that universities are no longer the chief institutions through which knowledge is preserved, generated and disseminated.  Australian campuses are rapidly becoming places where intellectual inquiry is being crippled and the free exchange of ideas is severely limited.  Collectivism and groupthink have no place in our universities, which to all intents and purposes are failing in their purpose.

Patten Law Will Erode More Of Our Democracy

Fiona Patten's proposed anti-vilification amendments are a supercharged 18C that threaten the legal rights of all Victorians and their freedom to engage in public debate.

The Victorian parliament is currently debating the Racial and Religious Tolerance Amendment Bill 2019, which was introduced into the upper house by Reason Party leader and lone representative Patten in August.  The bill promises to threaten freedom of speech in the state by vastly expanding the classes of protected people under the existing anti-vilification framework.

It will stifle discussion on a range of contentious issues captured within the left's identity politics bingo card.

Currently, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act 2001 makes it unlawful for a person to engage in conduct that "incites hatred against, serious contempt for, or revulsion or severe ridicule" of another person because of their race or religious belief or activity.  The Patten bill would add gender, disability, and sexual orientation as new "protected attributes".

Just like section 18C of the federal Racial Discrimination Act, which make it unlawful to offend or insult another person because of their race, Victoria's anti-vilification laws are vaguely worded and contain no objective standard for unlawful speech.  It will leave the door wide open for each judge to draw their own conclusions about what kind of conduct is likely to "incite hatred" or "severe ridicule".

In reality there is no meaningful difference between an act that is likely to incite hatred and an offensive act because the standard is based on an emotional response.  It is an inherently subjective exercise for a judge to determine whether an expression is likely to elicit an emotional reaction in another person.

Subjective laws mean you can never be sure when you will be deemed to be breaking the law since you can't anticipate how the law will be applied.  It is a poor basis for designing law, and an exceptionally poor basis for laws which restrict one of our most important freedoms.

Ambiguous laws such as these will throw into legal doubt a range of issues of contemporary debate for all Victorians, including the media, from opinion columnists and commentators like the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt to journalists such as The Australian's Bernard Lane, who frequently writes about important but controversial gender identity issues.

Dealing with frivolous complaints mean the process is itself the punishment.  The risk of expressing an opinion will frighten people into silence.  This is known as the chilling effect on free speech, and is a feature — not a bug — of so-called hate speech laws.

Ms Patten responded to criticism in The Australian last week that the bill is about "public hate speech that principally threatens or incites hatred and violence ... limiting people's right to abuse and incite hatred and violence is not limiting free speech."

It is misleading to conflate the issue of inciting violence — which is rightly restricted among a litany of state and federal laws without controversy — with the amendments before parliament which primarily deal with inciting severe ridicule for instance.  This bill is not about stopping violence — it is about stopping debate.

Our experience with the federal section 18C should tell us why we don't need an equivalent at the state level.  The long running and infamous complaint made against several students at the Queensland University of Technology arising from Facebook comments about an indigenous-only computer lab on campus in 2013 exposed the failure to respect principles of natural justice and procedural fairness behind the scenes at the Australian Human Rights Commission.  Is there any reason to believe that expanding the role and powers of Victoria's human rights commission, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, won't lead to similar results?

We do know that the Patten bill seeks to give that very organisation the power to apply to the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT) to compel people to produce documents to identify online "trolls" after a vilification complaint has been made.  The power to force people to give information to an authority is clearly in conflict with an individual's right to silence, and runs contrary to the traditions of common law liberties and the rule of law dating back to the sealing of the Magna Carta in 1215.

Coercive powers like these should be strictly limited, and only exercised by a proper court of law.  VCAT, by their own admission, are not a court, and should not be given court-like powers.

The Andrews government has not confirmed whether it will give its support to the Patten bill, and has kicked it off into a parliamentary inquiry for review.  It should realise that freedom of speech is central to human dignity and human flourishing.  A functioning democratic system depends on the ability of people to put forward their views without fear of legal restriction and state punishment.

Rule Of Law Gets Lost In Commissions

If you were to ask the average CEO of the average ASX 100 company to talk for 10 minutes about climate change or Indigenous recognition they would easily be able to do so.  If you asked them to talk about "diversity" those 10 minutes would likely stretch to 20 minutes or even half an hour.

That is of course unless you asked the CEO to talk about one particular type of diversity.  Your average CEO might be less forthcoming discussing the opportunity their employees have to express views inside their company such as, for example, that all Australians should have the same democratic rights regardless of their race.

If your average CEO was asked to talk about the rule of law as it applied to their business, most likely they'd struggle to make five minutes.  That's a pity because the protections afforded by the rule of law to everyday citizens are increasingly being restricted and eliminated if you happen to be a company director.  A person on trial for drug trafficking has more rights than a bank executive being cross-examined in a royal commission.  Literally.

In an important speech earlier this week, barrister and company director Philip Crutchfield QC made this point, even if he didn't exactly use those words.

As he said, "One of the problems with royal commissions for reputations is that the mere asking of a question, no matter how answered, is taken to suggest wrongdoing or the giving of false evidence.  The mere making of an imprecise or misguided submission can also lead to immediate damage.  The reporting the next day of a person's name in association with the damaging question or submission can have lethal consequences."  In a criminal trial the accused gets a right of reply.  A witness in a royal commission doesn't.

The rule of law is not just the principle that rules apply to both the ruled and rulers.  It also encompasses notions that laws should be understandable, consistent and predictable, and that they should be applied fairly, ie according to the rules of natural justice.  The rule of law doesn't only protect an individual's legal rights.  It also protects their reputation and, at least in theory, it should protect their ability to earn a livelihood.

It's not just the growing number of royal commissions and parliamentary enquiries into corporate behaviour that are eroding directors' rights under the rule of law.  In response to the seemingly ever-increasing demand of the public for company wrongdoers to be named, shamed, and presumably eventually jailed, judges and regulators are holding directors responsible for actions over which they can't reasonably have been expected to have any expertise in or knowledge of.

Again as Crutchfield said, "directors now have an obligation that is personal, and cannot be delegated, to understand aspects of the company's business in ways which are simply unrealistic".  Some might argue that given some of the corporate misfeasance that has been uncovered in recent years the "top end of town" deserves everything it gets.  That view might be understandable, but eventually, the laws that at first appear as though they will only impact the large corporates, will impact every company, no matter how big or small.  Eventually, the desire to avoid any sort of risk or mistake will chill all commercial activity.  Arguably this is already starting to be seen as new business investment falls to Whitlam-era levels.

These are the sorts of things Australian corporate leaders should be talking about.  Instead, as Ben Morton, the assistant minister to the PM and cabinet with responsibility for cutting red tape, told the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry yesterday "too often big businesses have been in the frontline on social issues, but missing in action when arguing for policies which would grow jobs and the economy".

Morton is surely correct when he notes the tendency of Australian corporates to pander to "noisy, highly orchestrated campaigns of elites" instead of arguing for policies — like tax and industrial relations reform, like red tape reduction, and yes, even like the maintenance of the rule of law for company directors — that "make Australia more productive and create more employment."

Ban On Mayoral Medals Reveals A Chain Of Fools

Clover Moore's decision to stop wearing the City of Sydney's historic mayoral chains is based on ignorance.  Not just the ignorance of wearing a symbolic outfit for fifteen years before suddenly deciding that it was racist, but a more pervasive problem of Australians completely failing to understand their history.

The Lord Mayor claims that the motto "I take but I surrender" sitting below the image of an Aboriginal man and a colonial settler, refers to the taking of land from Australia's Indigenous population and is therefore insensitive.  However, even brief historical research reveals that the motto was never intended to refer to Indigenous Australians at all.  An administration should not be making decisions to remove historical symbols if they have not even bothered to attempt to understand those symbols.

If not for acting rashly and claiming authority, Moore's mistake would be fairly excusable.  After all the Sydney Town Hall's website, run by the City of Sydney, makes a similar claim.  It says that "The motto 'I take but I surrender' was meant to imply that the early settlers came to New South Wales and took the land, but in doing so, also gave it back.  Today this concept is regarded as ambiguous so the City of Sydney uses a simpler version of the coat of arms."

This is incorrect.  In 1881 the city authorities were asked to clarify the intent of the motto and they said that "it means that the city takes from the citizens in the shape of rates something which it surrenders in improvements and other benefits".  At the time the City of Sydney was one of the few incorporated municipalities in New South Wales.  Incorporation was then voluntary, but few areas took up the opportunity because it meant being asked to pay more in taxes for services that would otherwise be administered directly by the New South Wales Government.  This situation would endure until the Carruthers Government introduced a system of comprehensive local government in 1905.

In such circumstances it was necessary for councils to make a claim that the extra taxation was worthwhile.  The coat of arms did this through both the motto and an image of a beehive symbolising bees collecting pollen that would then be transformed into beneficial honey.  This image was later removed to make way for a set of three coats of arms.  Those of Viscount Sydney, the city's namesake, Captain Cook, and Sir Thomas Hughes, the first Lord Mayor.

The idea that "I take" referred to the taking of land seems to have been entirely extrapolated from this new graphic design and the image of the Aboriginal warrior which had always been there.  The misconception had already set in by the 1930s, though in a more positive form.  In that decade several newspapers reported that "I take but I surrender" referred to the British Government voluntarily giving New South Wales responsible government.  It was thus seen as a celebration of the birth of Australian democracy.

In a climate where people are prone to focus on the shameful parts of Australia's history, somewhere along the line the perceived emphasis of the motto has been shifted so that it is no longer on the British surrendering their Colony to its people, but on the British taking the land in the first place.  Even if we excuse not investigating the motto's true meaning, this is almost a deliberate attempt to find something sinister that was never intended.  Though we should acknowledge the dark parts of our past, it is worth noting that in New South Wales Aboriginal men were not denied the vote, so they too had something to celebrate in the coming of responsible government.

The fact that even the Sydney Town Hall's official website could get this so wrong reveals a bigger problem, Australians fundamentally do not know their own history.  Until this is rectified it is pointless to have a discussion about removing colonial imagery like Sydney University's statue of William Wentworth.  Tearing down symbols through ignorance only promotes further ignorance.  If Clover Moore cares about our colonial past enough to discard her chains, maybe she should engage with it.

Aunty Complains About A Lack Of Alternative Views? That's A Bit Rich

Media Watch is everything that is wrong with the ABC, squeezed into 15 insufferable minutes.

Smug, elitist and, above all, awash with the misguided idea that commercial media outlets are not to be trusted and that the only place where honest news can be found is in Aunty's warm, state-sponsored embrace.

The program is usually best ignored, but its segment this week on the saga of Peter Ridd is worth calling out for its breathless hypocrisy.  For the uninitiated, Ridd is a marine geophysicist who, until recently, was professor of physics at James Cook University in Townsville.  Ridd is also an expert on the Great Barrier Reef and disputes the view that it is being killed by climate change.

Earlier this year the Federal Circuit Court found that his dismissal was unlawful.

Fast forward to this week's Media Watch in which host Paul Barry spent a fair chunk of taxpayer-funded time bemoaning the attention from The Australian and other outlets to Ridd's perspective on reef science.

The coverage, according to Barry, was "a real free kick" and "a free platform, with no opposing viewpoints".

That the ABC could complain about a lack of opposing viewpoints is staggering.

When it comes to climate change in particular, the ABC is hopelessly predisposed towards climate alarmism.  That may explain why up until Monday night, the ABC has shown less interest in the Ridd affair.

Ridd's sacking, legal appeal and eventual victory in court attracted such strong public interest that eventually even the federal Attorney-General weighed in when the subject was raised by numerous colleagues in a recent partyroom meeting.  But coverage from our "trusted" public broadcaster?

Not much.  A search of the ABC's website returns just a handful of reports on what was the most significant case on academic freedom in many years.

If the ABC had bothered, they would know that Ridd's beef isn't just with popular notions of doom and gloom surrounding the Great Barrier Reef but also with the quality of the underlying science.

Much of it, according to Ridd, is not being properly checked, tested or replicated.

As a result, governments are spending billions of dollars and jeopardising whole industries to "save" the reef when it probably doesn't need saving.

It should be noted as well that throughout the extensive disciplinary process against Ridd, James Cook University never once addressed his complaints about the poor quality of climate science coming out of the univer­sity, a fact highlighted by the judge himself during Ridd's case.

But far be it for the ABC to let poor science get in the way of a good story.  Naturally, the segment included an article from The Guardian citing a handful of scientists who are adamant the Great Barrier Reef is in trouble and that Ridd should be ignored.

Media Watch even repeated hysterical comparisons between Ridd's research and anti-vaxxer campaigns.

Interestingly, one scientist cited by the ABC was Terry ­Hughes.  Like Ridd, Hughes is based at James Cook, and arguably triggered the whole saga when, according to court documents, he lodged a complaint about some relatively mild comments Ridd made in relation to reef science on Sky News.  This connection was apparently missed by the Media Watch team.

What the ABC doesn't understand is that the Ridd saga is about much more than the Great Barrier Reef or even climate science.

It raises serious questions about academic freedom, about the right of a university professor to voice dissenting views without being hounded out of his tenure, as Ridd was by James Cook.

This is why Ridd was supported by a large section of the community.  Many of his university colleagues defended him and one resigned in disgust.

He even received support from the National Tertiary Education Union — not exactly a bastion of right-wing views.  But of course, on the ABC, all of that complexity is lost, reduced to a tired pantomime about right-wing commentators pushing the views of one scientist to advance their own murky climate agenda.

Now, if the ABC were a private organisation it could take whatever editorial line it wanted — and would be far from the only outlet in Australia to sympathise with climate evangelism.  But the ABC receives $1.1 billion of our money each year for news coverage that, by law, must be balanced.

Maybe the ABC should comply with its charter and make way for alternative views rather than taking juvenile pot shots at its rivals.