We're back with face to face functions

Dear ,

We have a couple of important events coming up which I want to share with you, particularly as the first one is looking like a sell-out performance, so I wouldn’t want you to miss it by delaying your booking.

I also want to share some of our activities of the last month or so.

And finally, the current PC sex scandal and the Liberal and National Parties’ handling of it deserves some scrutiny.

Peter Ridd Book Launch: ReeF HeReSY

Peter Ridd stands for some of our favourite characteristics: bravery, objectivity, and empiricism. In calling out his colleagues’ shoddy work he was doing James Cook University a favour, but the university decided to reward it by sacking him.

With more time on his hands Peter has produced a definitive book looking at the coral-eating crown-of-thorns star fish, the impact of nutrient pollution from agriculture, dredging of shipping ports, climate change, coal dust, over-fishing, and herbicides and finds the risk to the reef hysterically overstated.

We’re proud to be launching it in Brisbane at 6:00 pm on Friday April 23 in our offices at 50 Logan Road, Woolloongabba.

You’ll be able to meet Peter and hear him talk, buy his book, or even contribute to his defence fund. This is our first live function since March 15 last year when COVID and the state government closed us down, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing you again.

To buy a ticket click here.

But be quick. Because of COVID we can only handle 50 people, and since advertising the function Thursday we’re already halfway there.

McIlwraith Lecture with Professor Perry Bartlett

Who would think that Brisbane could be the best city in Australia to do ground-breaking medical research? Our guest lecturer Professor Perry Bartlett AO FAA would be one - a Melburnian, now successfully transplanted to Brisbane - who is the founder of the Queensland Brain Institute.

The lecture will be held on Wednesday May 5 at the Greek Club, starting at 7:00 for 7:30. To book click here. This is our major fundraiser for the year.

This lecture is not to be missed as Professor Bartlett AO FAA gives us insights into what he is doing, and how Queenslanders have made it possible.

I was a little taken aback by your emphasis on entrepreneurship – we snobbish scientists associate this with Trumpian virtues rather than scientific facts, but after reading the intent of the lecture...I realise it very much encompasses what has been achieved in building brain science at QBI to world leadership level and how we are now using this knowledge in clinical trials to prevent disease and establish commercial enterprises in Queensland and overseas.

Perry is a truly distinguished academic researcher, being one of the few to be awarded the CSL Florey medal.

From the Florey website:

When Perry started exploring the brain in 1977, the mature brain was regarded as static and unchangeable. He challenged this dogma and his work has led to a transformation in our understanding of the brain.

In 1982 Perry predicted that there were stem cells in the brain. In 1992 he found them in mouse embryos then in adult mice. A decade later, he isolated them from the forebrain.

His next big project was building up the Queensland Brain Institute from ten people to 500 in little more than a decade. Subsequently, the Institute has unleashed a new generation of neuroscientists whose discoveries range from using ultrasound to treat Alzheimer’s disease, to finding stem cells associated with mood, spatial learning and more.

The current focus of Professor's Bartlett's laboratory is understanding the mechanisms that regulate neurogenesis, or the generation of new neurons.

Publications

There is a housing boom on around Australia, which means prices will go up and many young Australians will be locked-out of the market. Housing affordability has long been a concern of ours, and we released our latest Housing Affordability Index earlier this week. It shows that affordability in the December quarter decreased by a small amount, but also that house prices in Brisbane have the potential to rise up to 62%, based on peak unaffordability in previous booms.

Which leads to our most important paper so far this year: "Superannuation and Housing: growing the cake and eating it too". The idea behind this, which we first proposed almost five years ago, is that first home buyers should be able to borrow as much of their deposit as they need from their own superannuation fund. It’s good to see that federal Liberal backbencher, and member for Goldstein, Tim Wilson has come on board with his House First Super Second campaign. If you support this concept, please go to his website and sign his petition.

Gender politics

I know there are a lot of good women who’ve been caught up in the #March4Justice and related campaigns, and I’m not trying to minimise the horror of rape, but this current campaign is nothing more than an attempt to remove the Morrison government by dividing the country along lines of sex.

You can tell it is political because the demands are impossible to meet – violence, sexual or otherwise, can be minimised, but it will never be eliminated – and because the proponents ignore all misdemeanours on the Labor or Greens side, of which there are many, and concentrate only on the Coalition.

The facts are also against the campaign, because when it comes to physical violence men are much more likely to be victims than women (males are 64% of assault hospitalisations, for example), and rather than increasing, incidences of violence have been falling - from 7.5% in 2005 to 4.5% in 2016, according to the ABS.

Bettina Arndt, who was a guest speaker at one of our functions three years ago is involved in a campaign called “They don’t speak for me” which is being run by an organisation called Mothers of Sons. They are running a letter-writing campaign opposing any changes to rape laws to alter the onus of proof, supporting alternative solutions like restorative justice and challenging the content of “consent courses”. It is worth reading the letter, which you can download by clicking here.

I’m not a mother of sons, but I am a father of two daughters and two sons, and I want the same thing for all of my children – a world where they are treated on their individual merits without concern for their gender; where their actions have consequences; and they take responsibility for them.

I also want my children to be resilient, and compassionate, even to those who might have slighted them. There will always be someone who will be rude to us, or worse, but in most cases the law, or the government, has no basis for interfering in what will generally be social matters.

When you have a state premier advancing as an example of misogyny a man shaking her hand too firmly, as Annastacia Palaszczuk did last weekend, you know that you’re fishing for slights.

In the same week there was an example of the sort of violence that men face almost routinely, but the male victim wasn’t looking for sympathy, and has taken responsibility for his own role in the incident. Previously unseen CCTV footage showed Les Walker, Labor member for Townsville, being king hit in an altercation in a pub. He was so concussed he still cannot remember the details. This is a serious incident and Walker is taking responsibility for his own actions which contributed to the incident.

Resilience, and an acceptance that life can never be perfect, as well as a sense of perspective, are more important than ever in our society today. Expecting perfection blinds us to the need to take precautions, and then heightens our anger when our expectations are shattered. Of course everyone ought to be safe, no matter where they are, but in the real world that expectation will sometimes be shattered.

It seems everyone wants to be seen as a victim at the moment, but valorisation of victimhood does no favours to the victim, or our community. In our society most violence is infrequent, when it occurs in social settings generally doesn’t need legislative oversight, and is currently eviscerating our ability to function sensibly as a community.

We face threats of overwhelming violence, such as from China, that will require resilience on a scale we haven’t had to demonstrate for more than 75 years, and which ultimately doesn’t have a legislative solution. And here we are paralysed over a few cases of genuine violence, and handshakes!

Conclusion

Keep watching the COVID news, but I’m looking forward to seeing you at one of our 2 functions. It’s time we snapped back to normal. And think about the gender wars that appear to have been unleashed on us. Atomising  our society into multiple “them”s and “us”s is not the road towards a successful, or civilised, culture.

Kind regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR