The Cairns Post

Fighting for normal is hard slog

- Paul Murray is a broadcaste­r on Sky News. He can be seen Sunday to Thursday 9-11pm on FOXTEL and WIN.

THERE was even more crazy than usual last week, and even though you may get tired of endlessly fighting back, fight we must.

Let’s start with the idea of allowing non-citizens to vote. After every election, there is a parliament­ary inquiry about what can be done for a better election next time. Then enters a French-born graphic designer who suggested to the inquiry that permanent residents should be able to vote.

Online news outlets quickly ran with the claim that 2.2 million permanent residents are being shut-out of the electoral process. Yes, that’s the idea. If you want to vote in an Australian election, become an Australian citizen.

Then down in Sydney, a university is planning to set two different entry level marks for an engineerin­g degree. Amazingly, the Discrimina­tion Commission will allow the University of Technology Sydney to drop the required entry mark by 10 per cent for female students to ensure more women become engineers. What rubbish. We’re not talking about arts degrees, they are lowering the bar of academic achievemen­t for engineergr­ades, ing. Maths, physics and all the knowledge needed to become an engineer has nothing to do with gender and everything to do with your ability to understand and harness these discipline­s. If you lower the standard to qualify for these degrees, it will only lead to more people failing their exams. But who cares right? It makes someone in the university’s head office feel good.

In Victoria, the latest NAPLAN results showed another year of flat or falling standards in our schools. Yet, rather than admitting our decade long attitude of throwing more money at the problem, some teachers want to drop the test altogether.

That’s one way to solve falling just stop testing the kids. Insane.

Sadly, I’m not done yet. In the woke republic of Victoria, one of their upper house MP’s want to pass laws to protect women from online abuse.

Of course, we all abhor online abuse, but if it’s bad enough to be declared a crime why is it only passing the abuse women are receiving? And don’t even get me started on the plan to outlaw debate about the endless transgende­r issues floating in the media every day. Like the academic who effortless­ly declared that any parent who doubts their child’s true intentions to switch genders is no different from someone who physically abuses their child.

Finally, there’s the snob who runs a cinema in inner-city Melbourne who said that people in the suburbs who didn’t pay $20 to see yet another documentar­y about Adam Goodes, were racist. About 850,000 people went to the movies last weekend, but only about 8000 saw the Goodes documentar­y. The film website IR put their best spin on the poor box office result, stating that the film “resonated best in upscale, urban locations around the country.” A cinema in Carlton sold the most tickets to the documentar­y and their general manger was very proud, telling IF.com.au that “This indicates that progressiv­e audiences are receptive to the film and its message of the racial prejudice shown towards Adam Goodes.” However, the manager couldn’t resist a dig at the suburbs where the film didn’t do well, saying “I feel it is only appropriat­e to consider that the lack of enthusiasm shown for the film in some markets is very likely to be due to a resistance to engage with a message that will be, for many, uncomforta­ble viewing.”

Conclusion: if you saw the movie you are a good person. If you are one of the 842,000 that didn’t, you are a racist. The truth of course is there were 100 locations where people could see the movie, but funnily enough they just didn’t want to. But fear not, you will pay to see the second Goodes documentar­y anyway. It will run on Ch2 next year thanks to the taxpayer.

 ??  ?? NO NAPLAN: Some people don’t like the results and want to ditch the test.
NO NAPLAN: Some people don’t like the results and want to ditch the test.

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