Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏

Literary magpie. Latest book -- The Age of Fibs: fiction, memoir, microlit -- (see in linktree below). Green lefty - she/her/dr.

[Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 @bethspen]

Kind of blown away by this article by Helen Elliot in the March issue of @TheMonthly - https://t.co/wJCdb4Em1d
#TheAgeofFibs

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

Please share widely.
My paper has just been published in Clinical Psychologist: “Arguing the need for Aboriginal specific testing of attachment theory as a foundation of culturally informed child protection and attachment best practice.”

This paper, I believe is critically important to reducing Indigenous child removals.

The gap it documents is this: Aboriginal child removals have increased 119% over a decade. Non-Indigenous removals are down 12%. And the primary scientific tool used to assess infant attachment — Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Procedure — has been validated in more than 40 countries. Never with Aboriginal Australians.

That is not a footnote. That is a foundation missing from every child protection decision made about Aboriginal families by a workforce that is 94% non-Indigenous.

Based on over two decades of original research and clinical work, this paper presents new models for understanding culturally informed attachment — including collective caregiving, kinship obligation, skin and avoidance relationships, race-mediated trauma, and Black Identity Formation — and what it means for assessment and treatment.

The Westerman Jilya Institute has secured funding to do what this paper argues is urgently needed: validate the SSP with Aboriginal children for the first time, and build the first evidence-based attachment program designed from within Aboriginal culture.

https://t.co/rKxCr7gf4o

[Matthew Todd 🌏🔥 @MrMatthewTodd]

The penny will drop soon. There will be mass panic and the media will be fighting to say they weren’t warned how bad it was. They were. Like here:

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

Wow! I forgot how many trolls there are on X. After tweeting about how many current politicians have qualifications relevant to their portfolios (in response to Pauline Hansons appalling political record)-what followed was a barrage of arguments that relevant expertise is somehow bad for the country —classic Trumpism and Hansonism.
Revealing. And terrifying.
Trump literally said he loves the uneducated — at a rally — and got cheered for it. That’s the playbook: manufacture resentment toward expertise so that incompetence becomes a virtue and accountability becomes elitism.
The really dangerous part isn’t Hanson or Trump themselves — it’s that their supporters have been successfully convinced that being against knowledge and evidence is somehow authentic and brave. That questioning a politician’s relevant expertise is snobbery rather than basic accountability.
You’d never apply the anti-expertise logic anywhere else. Nobody says “I don’t want a qualified surgeon, I want someone who just gets it.” Nobody says “I don’t care if my engineer has credentials, I care about his character.” As if Hanson’s character is to be admired.
But somehow when it comes to the people managing the economy, health policy, and Indigenous affairs — suddenly expertise is suspicious.
It’s not anti-elitism. It’s anti-accountability — and Hanson has made a 30-year career out of it without fixing a single thing she complains about.

[Rock'n Roll of All @rocknrollofall]

TV reporter tells David Bowie the internet is "hugely exaggerated"

David Bowie's response is the closest thing to perfection about the future.

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

This is huge - it's the thin, visible tip of a very large hostile takeover of Australia's universities, largely unseen

[David Pocock @DavidPocock]

Labor, the Coalition and One Nation all just voted against an amendment I put up to call on the Government to get a fair deal on the sale and export of Australian gas by instituting a 25 per cent tax on LNG export revenue, which is estimated to generate $17 billion a year.

They're running a protection racket for the gas industry rather than standing up for Aussies.

*Senators Lambie, Payman and Thorpe were unable to attend the vote for personal reasons.

[Australia Institute @TheAusInstitute]

Every week the federal government delays a 25% gas export tax costs the Australian public around $350 million in revenue.

That's $350 million a week that could have gone to funding essential services!
@DavidPocock #auspol

[Australia Institute @TheAusInstitute]

Without a 25% tax on gas exports, Australians are missing out on billions of dollars in revenue.

That's billions of dollars Australians aren't getting for gas that belongs to them, that could be going to essential services.
@Nicolette_Boele #auspol

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

I just woke up and read all of the internet. Really good stuff. Everyone’s doing great. I feel hopeful about things.

[Dr Amanda Tink @amandatink]

1/3 I'm super excited to say that the Writing Disability Special Issue of JASAL (Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature) that I co-edited with Jessica White is out and freely available at:
https://t.co/3tVkniT6PI

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

@SchoonerLita @strangerous10 @Mercfan3Mercfan Correct

Jillian Segal's position has nothing to do with combating genuine racism/antisemitism as evidenced by her total silence on the many neo-Nazi displays this year

She is there to silence critics of Israel

Jillian Segal is an agent of Israel, acting on behalf of Israel

[Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 @bethspen]

A rich & wonderful memorial page to @moya_costello - where you can also read or listen to the tributes & readings from other writers, & her partner Jeff Williams. Or watch the full video of the memorial service that was in Tasmania a few weeks ago. https://t.co/Q8gA1gTOyp

[Barbara Pocock @BarbaraPocock]

100's of jobs cut at CSIRO when it has never been more important for govts to invest in science & research. Why can Labor find $$ for AUKUS but not our nation’s premier science, industry & research org? The Greens implore the Albanese government to commit funding & prevent cuts.

[Beth Spencer 📚 🎶✍️ 🌏 @bethspen]

Birthday week.. over at s--u--b--st--a--ck:

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

Over 2 years into the #NACC's operation and Australia has fallen out of the top 10 countries with the best reputation.

We're going backwards, not forwards.

The NACC is a facade designed by the Albanese govt to placate people that something is being done.

Nothing is being done.

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

For the record - NSW Police investigated 14 alleged incidents of anti-semitic attacks and found NO evidence of Iran or any other foreign agent acting in relation to 14 alleged antisemitic incidences

The Minns and Albanese govts both exploited this falsehood

.

[Eddie Lloyd @worldzonfire]

David McBride has been refused leave to appeal. We’re disappointed, but not surprised. His prosecution has been political from the start — punishment for telling the truth, not breaking the law.

Our system is broken. When politics corrupts justice, there is no justice.

With every legal avenue now closed, we call on Attorney-General Michelle Rowland to grant David a pardon.

Supported by @theinforights we ask all Australians who believe in truth and fairness to stand with us — sign the open letter ⬇️
🔗 https://t.co/KjU3d7H8BL

Politicians don’t listen until people make them. People power works. Let’s make them hear us.

Please share this post as far and wide as you can.

#FreeDavidMcBride #WhistleblowerProtection #TruthTeller #Justice #Courage #InformationRightsProject

[Dr Tracy Westerman AM @TracyWesterman]

PLEASE SHARE WIDELY!

WATCH: Dr Tracy Westerman AM, Founder & Chair of Jilya, introduce the inaugural Jilya Indigenous Psychology Conference — a powerful gathering of voices, stories, and solutions led by Indigenous psychologists supported by the Dr Tracy Westerman Indigenous Psychology Scholarship Program 🖤💛❤️
⁣
📅 5 December 2025
📍 Perth, WA
This landmark event will showcase game-changing presentations.
This is more than a conference — it’s a movement.

https://t.co/WMeMwNrGgy

Only 200 seats left -many sold at pre sale! Don’t miss out!

#JilyaConference2025 #IndigenousPsychology #DrTracyWesterman #AboriginalExcellence
#MentalHealthMatters

[David Shoebridge @DavidShoebridge]

Robodebt was illegal and people died. The Royal Commission laid it all out.

Still no one has been charged or held accountable. It’s a stain on our country.

[Ronni🧂Salt-WhoWroteGunnawahYeahThatOne @RonniSalt]

Anyone seen the pro-Israel sycophant Jillian Segal lately, the one we pay $1 million a year for?

I believe the last time she popped her rabbit-in-the-headlights face up, she spoke endlessly about how we can stop all this hate

Start with Israel, Jill

Israel is a terrorist state