1 The single most important issue confronting us as a nation, longterm, is the population explosion. Back in the late 1990s the Australian Bureau of Statistics predicted we wouldn’t reach 25 million people until 2050. We got there this week over three decades earlier than expected. The driving force behind this dramatic increase is immigration. We’re a nation that’s built on immigrants and always will be the case but the brakes must be applied for a period of time while we take stock. We don’t have the resources nor the infrastructure to deal with this dramatic increase. This notion we can stop 87 per cent of new arrivals settling in Sydney or Melbourne is just nonsense.
2 It doesn’t really matter why Labor’s MP Emma Husar decided not to contest the next federal election. Her attempt to discredit one of her accusers, former staffer Jeremy Anderson, has backfired with many of the other 21 complainants ready to tell their stories. She can quickly slip out of the public spotlight and concentrate on just being another resident of Western Sydney.
3 In the past two weeks we’ve seen the NSW government offer another $500 million in drought relief while the federal government tipped in another $190 million, but you can’t escape the fact that since 2013 the federal government has dished out $26 billion in foreign aid and a fraction of that in relief for our farmers. The pendulum needs to swing back the way of domestic relief, not foreign aid.
4 Great work by Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton to strip five more terrorists of their Australian citizenship. He’s one of the few ministers in the federal government who seems to be in touch with the electorate.
5 I hope Defence Minister Marise Payne was fair dinkum when she told me this week the ADF won’t go down the path of gender neutral language. The political correctness lobby is like a weed engulfing all of us. It must stop. It’s not who we are as a nation.
6 The story this week, in this paper, about Sydney Uni lecturer Fiona Martin’s attack on the deceased cartoonist Bill Leak was just reprehensible. I’d hope that Ms Martin is reflecting on just how disgraceful her attack was and it has no place in a centre of learning.
7 Minister Gabrielle Upton put out a media release this week telling us how good “return and earn” had been with a 33 per cent reduction in that type of litter. The next day we found out this poorly thought-out system was costing NSW taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and the vast majority of these cans and bottle are still going into the yellowtopped bins. Back to the drawing board.
8 Minister for Fair Trading Matt Kean has stripped a director of the Plumbing Detectives of his licence as investigations continue into overcharging by the Plumbing, Electrical and Air Conditioning Detectives. When you get one of these magnetic stickers in the mail from this mob, please put it in the bin. There are plenty of reputable, decent local plumbers who will do the job for you.
9 I’ve been broadcasting and covering rugby league for 32 years. I thought I’d seen it all until a coach who has two years to run on his contract was sacked this week four weeks out from the semis with his team assured of making the finals. Former Penrith coach Anthony Griffin has my best wishes. Rugby league is very much different in 2018 than it was when I started in 1987 — and sometimes it’s not for the better.
10 Thanks to Billy Slater for all those years of entertainment. A lovely young bloke. Have a happy retirement mate.
Article by Ray Hadley appeared in the Daily Telegraph
