Archive | Abbott, Tony. FORMER Australian Prime Minister RSS feed for this section

Why the Gillard government was stuffed from the start

4 Nov

On the surface of it, it’s inexplicable that a government pushing through as many pieces of legislation as this one, some 200 plus, could be regarded as incompetent and its leader treated with an almost universal lack of respect. There was a good piece on the Political Sword a few weeks ago detailing some of the Gillard government’s achievements and questioning why the media is so ready to prophesy Gillard’s demise.

If you’ve seen any of Gillard’s more recent press conferences maybe you’ve noticed her demeanour. The PM is grim-faced, tight-lipped, and exudes an air of defensive hostility towards the press pack. Even in one to one interviews she appears braced for attack, aware that she is not liked. In a recent interview with Leigh Sales on the 7.30 Report, Sales ended the interview with “Thank you Julia Gillard.” There were voices raised in annoyance: why did Sales not say “Prime Minister?”

Then there’s the mean tweets that appear now and again from journos you’d think would know better than to express personal sentiments against the PM on Twitter and I’m not talking about the Tele’s Joe Hildebrand, from whom one expects little else.

So what is this about?

The engineers of the coup against Kevin Rudd did Julia Gillard no favours. As Deputy PM , Ms Gillard appeared a steadying and common sense influence beside the sometimes overly exuberant Rudd. Her comments were restrained and measured, and for some reason, at that time her voice caused no offense. She appeared loyal, and capable of giving as good as she got in Parliament. I liked her a lot in that role. I thought she’d probably be a very good PM one day.

Then suddenly there she was announcing that the government had lost its way and she was going to get it back on track. This was news to everyone including the media, who I suspect have not yet forgiven the ALP for catching them so totally unawares. They’re now reactively trumpeting leadership challenges every second minute in order to avoid another embarrassment, and to pay the government back for so totally shutting them out.

In a sense the media are right to feel such indignation. The most stupid thing the so-called “faceless men” could have done was to conduct their coup in total secrecy. What they should have done was let it be known there were difficulties with Rudd’s leadership. They should have done more to confront their leader. It has never made sense to me that apparently nobody seriously confronted him, they just let him bully them. If they had the numbers to chuck him out, they had the numbers to take him to task, so why didn’t they do that? It’s not as if they feared execution for dissent.

They should also have conducted at least some of their business in public, thus preparing us for what was to come and demonstrating that Rudd was impossible, if indeed he was.

Instead literally overnight we lost one PM and gained another, without anybody, even the media, knowing there was anything seriously wrong. This led to a sense of disempowerment in the electorate, who’d given the ALP a mandate based largely on a Rudd-focused  campaign, even though only those in his electorate got to vote for him. It was a presidentially conducted election campaign in a Westminster system that led to an illusionary sense of public ownership of the PM. Then before he even sees out his first term, they’ve taken him away without so much as a whisper of what was to come, and the political landscape takes on the hue of a banana republic in the throes of a profound political uncertainty, about which nobody outside a very small and exclusive circle had the faintest idea. Australians don’t like that. We don’t like that kind of conspiratorial elitism. We won’t take it lying down, and we haven’t.

Out of this alarming turmoil there emerges our first female PM. In retrospect, who would have wanted the job? If ever there was a poisoned chalice this was it, and as is the way in politics, they gave it to a woman who was suitably grateful and over-awed to get it.

There was an outraged, resentful and suddenly very insecure electorate trying to deal with immense shock at the turn events had taken. There was a knifed former PM weeping on the telly with his wife holding his hand and rubbing his back, and his stricken kids in the background. The new PM immediately offered us absolute chaos in terms of asylum seeker policy, not to mention the ETS she’d apparently persuaded Rudd to drop, the carbon tax she would never introduce, and her increasingly strident claims that she would get the country back on a track we didn’t even know we’d fallen off.

Gillard appeared to have lost overnight her calm and sensible persona, and morphed into a power-drunk leader making stupid statements about detention centres in East Timor and how she’d never allow gay marriage. There was and continues to be far too much “I” and not nearly enough “we” in the PM’s public conversations. It’s hard for a man to get away with this much ego, but for a woman it’s a death sentence.

It’s always difficult for women to convey authority in public life. Gillard did it extremely well when she was deputy to a man. Unfortunately in our culture what is seen as authority in a man morphs into a perception of mere bossiness in a woman, and it takes an exceptionally strong woman to find an authoritative voice that isn’t going to be  condemned as bullying and hectoring. This isn’t Gillard’s fault, it’s the fault of the culture, however Gillard hasn’t found a way to negotiate this. It’s unfair that she or any woman should have to negotiate such prejudices, however the reality is, we do, and there are women who manage it. Gillard isn’t one of them.

Instead, she has become increasingly strident, increasingly hostile and increasingly defensive. In her interviews these days Gillard fairly bristles, ready to jump down the throat of any one who casts the faintest whiff of doubt on her policies and actions. She’s become trapped in  a vicious cycle of mutual hostility with the media, and there’s no way out.

Gillard got a rotten job in completely unacceptable circumstances. She wasn’t experienced enough or psychologically savvy enough to read the mood swings of a very upset electorate, and a very hostile media who don’t take well to big stuff happening behind their backs. Perhaps nobody could have found a productive way to deal with those circumstances, but I’d argue it’s twice as hard for a woman, particularly if she’s touting around a burden of guilt about how she got the job in the first place. There’s nothing makes one defensive as quickly as guilt.

The state the government finds itself in isn’t wholly Gillard’s fault. It’s largely the fault of the so-called “faceless men” who brought this situation about, and thrust her into premature leadership in chaotic and urgent circumstances. Gillard needed more time to learn and mature. She was in the ideal position to do this as Deputy PM. She may or may not have developed into an excellent PM, but now we will never know.

Instead she’s become the face of a party that didn’t even get a mandate in the last election and had to cobble together a government by, among other negotiations, apparently back-flipping on the carbon tax. This left them open to accusations that they did this not out of conviction, but because they needed the Greens onside. This, more than any other issue, has inflamed electoral hostility against them, on top of the aggro already in place.

All of this is gold for an opposition led by a feral fighter such as Tony Abbott. He knows the government stands on very shaky foundations after the Rudd debacle. He knows he’s got the media on side, if only because that media is so reactively hostile to Gillard. He hardly has to try.

It is really unspeakably sad. Casting my mind back to that night in 2007 when Rudd got the ALP so spectacularly over the line and we realised we’d been mercifully spared anymore of the Howard government, I shake my head at how it has all played out. All that squandered political capital. All that trashed good will and hope. Facing a future in the wilderness while an Abbott-led coalition government sets about undoing every good thing the government’s managed to accomplish.

It’s enough to make a strong woman cry. But I can’t help thinking in one tiny part of my mind that much as I don’t want the almost inevitable outcome, the government bloody deserves it, because they didn’t have the courage, the intelligence, the political savvy and the commonsense to deal with a recalcitrant Rudd in any other way.

As David Horton points out in this piece,  it may yet not be too late. If they can find the bottle they can at least go down in a blaze of glory, and maybe rescue themselves from the mire of disrespect and outright contempt into which their stupidity has led them. If only.

Tags: , , , , ,

The Iron Leprechaun grounds the Flying Kangaroo

1 Nov

I realise I’m probably in the minority but I can’t dredge up any over-heated feelings about Alan Joyce the person, of the kind that arise in me unbidden about the likes of, say, Tony Abbott, Christopher Pyne, Alan Jones, Julia Gillard, Julie Bishop, et al. The man seems like such a merry little fellow with his guile-less schoolboy eyes wide  behind glasses that look a little too small, and as if they were chosen for him by his mother.

Then there’s his enchanting Irish lilt in which he can announce events set to cause serious upheaval and deep offense to thousands and thousands of human beings who are just trying to live their lives, and make the offenses sound quite benign. No, the fellow does not provoke strong feelings in me, rather I’m bemused by the dissonance between Joyce’s immense power, and his inoffensive persona. If I was to accuse him of anything it would be a mild capacity for mischief. Just like the leprechaun who makes his mischief for the delight of watching what happens next. Of course, one can underestimate the intentions behind gleeful disruption. It is one of the many guises used by the devil to sow doubt and misery amongst humans.

I’ve had my fair share of minor disruption as a Qantas passenger. Last November returning from LA we didn’t have enough fuel to reach Brisbane and diverted to Noumea to top up. I found that interesting. They don’t know how much fuel they need to get from LA to Brisbane? Oh, it was the headwinds. OK. Then, finally on our way again after hours on the tarmac bitching and moaning we ran out of food, and most of us got no breakfast.

Then there was the time en route to Mexico when a couple of hours into the flight we ran out of water, forcing us to retain our intimate wastes if we possibly could as they had to be flushed away by bottles of water if we didn’t, an inefficient system to say the least. We didn’t get any breakfast then either, on the grounds that if they didn’t feed us we wouldn’t produce as many intimate wastes. I arrived in Mexico dehydrated, hungry and, well, I won’t spell it out for you.

At least I never got stranded in Los Angeles, which is probably the last place on earth anyone would choose to get stranded outside of Bangkok, where they have the coldest terminal in the world, furnished entirely with metal chairs that freeze your arse after five minutes and leave deep impressions in the flesh of your upper thighs. I once slept on the floor of that terminal waiting for a flight to somewhere that would eventually get me to Vientiane. It was unspeakably horrible but I can’t blame Qantas for that.

As things stand today the Iron Leprechaun has temporarily triumphed, both parties have been forced to suspend industrial action and enter into couple counseling. Many times have I sworn that I will never fly Qantas again. They have me in their power because of my frequent flyer points. But I plan to use them all up. I plan never to acquire anymore. I plan to switch my allegiances because enough is enough.

I loved Qantas, as much as one can love a commercial concept. The idea the Qantas brand successfully marketed for a long time was the idea of home. I will always remember once boarding a Qantas flight in Tokyo when the steward at the door said with a kind smile and a thrillingly familiar accent: “Welcome home, Dr Wilson.” Tired and emotional after many upheavals and weeks of  unrelenting travel, I found my seat and had a little cry. Now I was safe. Now I was home.

This is what I mean about mischief. It might not look too bad on the surface of it but it can carry a terrible punch.

PS I am not talking about horses today. No horses. However, if you choose to make an imaginative link between the picture below and the individual mentioned in this post, knock yourself out.

Tags: , , , , ,

Abbott’s duplicity: Mamamia and the Mad Monk

28 Oct

Tony Abbott has found himself an unlikely defender and advocate in the form of Mia Freedman,former editor of Cosmopolitan, Cleo and Dolly magazines, and columnist for the Sun Herald and the Sunday Age. Freedman also has  a regular spot on the Today Show, and hosts Mamamia Live on Sky News. She is editor and publisher of the highly popular Mamamia website.

With a history like this, Freedman has a big voice among women, and Tony Abbott will no doubt be glad to have her on his side.

It wasn’t always thus. In this article on the Mamamia site, Freedman explains that she was shocked to read a quote by her used without permission on the jacket of Susan Mitchell‘s new book about Abbott. The quote reads:“If he’s elected as our PM in the future I would be very scared for women everywhere.” Freedman made this statement in a piece she wrote in 2009 when Abbott became Leader of the Opposition. She is not happy that Mitchell’s publisher’s used it on the book without consulting her as she has changed her mind about Abbott in the ensuing period and does not hold the same views.

Over a breakfast with Abbott, brokered by Women’s Weekly editor Helen McCabe, Freedman writes that she came to respect and genuinely like Abbott very much, and that she likes his vibe. “I don’t believe Tony Abbott is a direct threat to women” she notes and goes on:

He did talk about his frustration at being constantly portrayed as king of the Catholics and the assumption that his personal faith would affect his policies. He spelled out that he is not opposed to contraception or IVF and that his views on abortion were not nearly as black and white as many people thought.

I asked him how and why he thought he had this image if it was inaccurate and he talked me through his views on that which were rooted in the RU486 vote in 2006 when he was health minister.

If Abbott’s views on abortion aren’t black and white, this is a complete contradiction of his views as expressed on his website in a piece titled “Rate of abortion highlights our moral failings,”  in which he states: When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boatpeople, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion, which is.

It’s also worth reading the transcript of Abbott’s ABC radio interview on the RU-486 (morning-after-pill) issue, in which he fails to explain why he’s ignored the AMA’s recommendations for the release of this drug for use by Australian women, in the face of overwhelming international research proving its safety.

Until Tony Abbott makes public statements to the contrary, women would be most unwise to accept any assurances that he’s changed his mind on women’s reproductive rights, especially as they are so clearly set out on his website. There is no mistaking his position.

We need hard facts from Abbott and we need them soon. If Mr Abbott no longer sees abortion as a “black and white issue”, if Mr Abbott no longer views abortion as “a convenience for the mother”  as he states on his website, then he needs to let us know.

In the meantime one has to wonder if  Ms Freedman has read the piece on Abbott’s website, because the dissonance between what he has written there and what he has said to her is great. It’s a measure of the man’s profound and sickening duplicity that he uses Ms Freedman in an attempt to persuade women he has revised his views on abortion, while making no attempt to correct the quite contrary views expressed on his website.

Related articles

Tags: , , , ,

Abbott’s ascendency puts women’s choice at risk

27 Oct

Is this the face of the next Prime Minister?

This article was first published in On Line Opinion

US Republican Presidential Candidate Michele Bachmann started her campaign as the Tea Party Queen, promising fiscal conservatism and an end to “Obamacare,” otherwise known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that in 2010 extended health care insurance to some 30 million Americans, arousing the fury of many who feared it was an indicator of what they allege is President Obama’s destructive inclination towards socialism.

Bachmann describes herself as a social conservative who believes that wives must be submissive to their husbands. She is the mother of five children, and appears to be of the opinion that it is virtuous to produce large families. She is a graduate of the Oral Roberts University, a Christian college where she studied tax law at the insistence of her husband, and where she learned that Christian morality is the basis of US law.

The term “social conservative” is considered by some in the US blogosphere to be code for evangelical Christian or Christian conservatism. Bachmann believes that what the US needs now is a marriage between fiscal and social conservatism, a marriage that she is attempting to contrive as the Tea Party’s apparent willingness to risk national default in the pursuit of their political goals saw some of their supporters take a set against them, and against Bachmann herself. Bachmann’s fortunes also took a turn for the worse when Texas Governor Rick Perry entered the Presidential race. In an effort to regain ground, Bachmann is now appealing directly to evangelical Christians, and focusing her efforts on gaining the support of conservative Christian voters.

 The Heartbeat Informed Consent Act

To this end, Congresswoman Bachmann has proposed a bill in the US House of Representatives known as the Heartbeat Informed Consent Act. This is federal legislation that would require pregnant women to have ultrasounds, and be shown pictures of the foetus they are carrying before an abortion could be performed.

The Act also requires that doctors be required by federal law to capture the sound of the feotal heartbeat and play it to the pregnant woman, before an abortion can legally be performed.

Penalties for abortions carried out without observance of these proposed laws are fines of $100,000 for the first offence, and $250,000 for repeat offences.

The premise on which the proposed bill is based is that a woman is far less likely to go through with an abortion if she sees the foetus, and hears the heartbeat. To this end, the proposed legislation requires that ultrasound pictures “accurately portray the presence of external members and internal organs, if present.”

Right-to-lifers have apparently given up attempting outright to have all abortion criminalized. Instead they are adopting a back door approach that seeks to move the permissible time frame to when the foetal heartbeat can be detected, thus legally redefining “life.” The heartbeat can be heard as early as eighteen days, and in Ohio, for example, the state version of the “Heartbeat Bill” proposes that all abortion is outlawed after a heartbeat is detected.

There is little likelihood of Bachmann’s federal bill getting past the Senate, and President Obama has let it be known that in the event that it does, he will veto it. However, a very similar piece of legislation known as the Informed Consent Bill is now being advocated in every US state, by anti abortion groups who are aware that Bachmann’s bill won’t be legislated at the federal level. At the state level this bill is backed by major conservative groups such as National Right to Life, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, Susan B Anthony’s List, and Family Research Council Action. In some states the bill stands a good chance of becoming law. In Rick Perry’s Texas for example, the bill has passed through two readings and requires only one more.

The Protect Life Act

This Act recently passed the House of Representatives with every Republican voting in favour, along with eleven Democrats who crossed the aisle to join them.

The Protect Life Act prohibits women from buying health insurance plans that cover abortion under the Affordable Care Act, and makes it legal for hospitals to deny abortions to pregnant women with life-threatening conditions. Its purpose is ostensibly to ensure that no taxpayer dollars flow to health care plans that cover abortion. In fact it is already against the law in the US to use taxpayer funds for abortion procedures, a fact right-to-lifers consistently ignore or misrepresent. Abortions are covered only by private insurance payments. However, this Bill would prevent women from buying an insurance plan that includes abortion through a state health care exchange, even though most private plans currently cover abortion.

The Protect Life Act also allows hospitals morally opposed to abortion, such as Catholic institutions, to do nothing for a woman who needs an emergency abortion to save her life. Hospitals in the US currently have an obligation to provide care in a medical emergency, however under the new Act that obligation would legally come second to the institutions’ moral objections to providing abortions.

This bill is also likely to be defeated in the Senate, and again President Obama has signaled his intention to veto the bill should it land on his desk.

However, it’s worth remembering that every Republican voted for it, as well as eleven Democrats.

In some quarters the bill has become known as the “Let Women Die Bill.”

Vow to withdraw federal funding for contraception.

Another Republican Presidential hopeful, Catholic father of seven Rick Santorum, has vowed to repeal all federal funding for contraception should he be elected President, on the grounds that contraception “is a license to do things in the sexual realm.” Santorum also holds the view that “ sex is supposed to be within marriage,” and he talks at length about “the dangers of contraception.” Santorum, like Bachmann, is a social and fiscal conservative.

Mitt the Mormon Bishop.

Mormon feminist academic Professor Judith Dushku developed a life-threatening blood clot when she was pregnant with her sixth child. Arrangements were made to abort the foetus and thus save her life. When Dushku arrived at the hospital for the procedure she was met by her then Mormon bishop and father of five, Mitt Romney. The following exchange allegedly took place between Dushku and Romney:

He said – What do you think you’re doing?

She said – Well, we have to abort the baby because I have these blood clots.

And he said something to the effect of – Well, why do you get off easy when other women have their babies?

And she said – What are you talking about? This is a life-threatening situation.

And he said – Well what about the life of the baby?

And she said – I have four other children and I think it would be really irresponsible to continue the pregnancy.

Dushku proceeded with the termination, and lived to bring up her four children. Though previously friends Romney and Dushku no longer speak, at his insistence.

In 2005 as Governor of Massachusetts, Romney revealed a change of principles on abortion, moving from the “unequivocal” pro-choice position he adopted throughout his 2002 gubernatorial campaign, to a staunch pro-life stand that saw him veto a bill that would expand access to emergency contraception in hospitals and pharmacies, on pro-life grounds.  Romney revealed to Dushka prior to their falling out that he had only adopted his pro-choice stand because he’d been advised it would be more appealing to voters, and that his true position had always been one of pro-life.

Meanwhile, back in Australia

If an election were held in Australia today it would be won by the Coalition, headed by Tony Abbott. Mr Abbott is a Catholic. In 2004 when he was Federal Health Minister, Mr Abbott stated in an interview with ABC Radio’s AM program that he was concerned about the “abortion epidemic” apparently raging in Australia. He said:

I certainly share the concerns that many people have about the number of abortions that are taking place in Australia today. We have something like 100,000 abortions a year, 25 per cent of all pregnancies end in abortion and even the most determined pro-choice advocates these days seem to be rightly concerned at the way that the abortion epidemic has developed.

The then Health Minister was supported in his concerns by his then junior Minister, Christopher Pyne, who expressed his moral difficulties with late-term abortion.

On ABC Radio’s PM program November 15 2005, then Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott explained why he had refused to approve the use of the abortion pill RU-486 for Australian women as follows:

TONY ABBOTT: I conclude that there is no reason, based on the report from the Chief Medical Officer, to change longstanding practice in regards to RU-486.

 CATHERINE MCGRATH: But the AMA says itself, that it is the best and safest, or it is an option for the best and safest termination, where doctors are assessing the risks to the patient.

TONY ABBOTT: That’s not my reading of the report from the Chief Medical Officer. My reading of that report is that there are significant additional health risks associated with medical terminations, and that the safest way to have a termination is a surgical termination.

CATHERINE MCGRATH: To say the AMA is stunned is an understatement, and the peak medical body takes issue with the advice Tony Abbott has received.

The AMA said Mr Abbott’s information on RU-486 “is plain wrong” and “ignores international research.” The AMA further said that the drug would be denied to Australian women for political reasons.

Then there’s this piece on Abbott’s website titled: Rate of Abortion Highlights our Moral Failings. The problem with the Australian practice of abortion is that an objectively grave matter has been reduced to a question of the mother’s convenience… Even those who think that abortion is a woman’s right should be troubled by the fact that 100,000 Australian women choose to destroy their unborn babies every year… When it comes to lobbying local politicians, there seems to be far more interest in the treatment of boatpeople, which is not morally black and white, than in the question of abortion, which is.

The belief that the question of abortion is “morally black and white” is one Tony Abbott shares with evangelical Michele Bachmann, Mormon Mitt Romney, and fellow Catholic Rick Santorum. Australian women should be very concerned about living under an Abbott-led Coalition government. Abbott’s stated (and written) beliefs on abortion are deeply entrenched. As Federal Health Minister he managed to prevent Australian women accessing RU-486 on entirely spurious grounds, grounds that were fiercely contested by medical experts, and international research. This is the action of a man whose decisions about women’s reproductive rights are determined solely by his religious faith.

RU-486 is still not readily available. There are only approximately 100 doctors Australia-wide who are Authorised Prescribers of the drug, and then only within their own practices and hospitals, the majority of which are in capital cities.

Do Australian women want to risk Tony’s rosaries on our ovaries again?

Abortion in Australia is a state, not federal matter. Laws vary between the states. In NSW, Queensland, South Australia, Northern Territory and Tasmania, abortion is subject to criminal law codes and acts. In the ACT there are no laws regarding abortion in the Crimes Act, and in Victoria the procedure is covered by the 2008 Abortion Law Reform Bill.

In Queensland in 2010 a young couple was prosecuted for obtaining an “unlawful abortion” after self-administering medication designed to cause early abortion. They were found not guilty. That such a case could be brought highlights the urgent need for abortion law reform in Australia. It’s well worth a visit to this site for examples of why such reform is imperative for women, and to see evidence that the Australian debate is in some quarters unnervingly similar to that in the USA.

An Abbott-led government is not good for Australian women’s reproductive health and our hard-won right to choose.

Related articles

Tags: , , , , ,

Tweet of the day

19 Oct
Tweeted by : EnoTheWonderdog An imaginary dog 
Superb – The Dr No of Politics, @TonyAbbottMHR had only stopped one thing with his obstructionist tactics. Offshore Processing!!
Yeah! Suck it up, Nope Dope.

Tags: ,

Abbott determines government’s asylum seeker policy and Cabinet’s in a leaky boat.

16 Oct

Is this the face of the next Prime Minister?

Somewhere in the never-ending and increasingly despicable contest between the government and the opposition over asylum seekers and on-shore processing, the human beings around whom this furore rages ceased to matter altogether.

If you doubt that statement have a look at this article by Peter Hartcher in Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald. Hartcher unpacks the politics that led to the Gillard government withdrawing its proposed Migration Act amendments last week and defaulting to on-shore processing, at least for the forseeable future.

Every aspect under discussion in Cabinet revolves around what Abbott might or might not do in reaction. And who’s the plank that said Bob Brown’s the real PM?

It’s patently clear that Tony Abbott is running this part of the show. The government reveals itself to be incapable of making any decision at all about boat arrivals without first considering what Abbott might do in response. There’s no mention of how best to design a policy that will prevent asylum seekers drowning, an endlessly cited core concern that actually looks as if it’s just trotted out for the media by both parties with the intention of applying a veneer of humanitarian concern to their self-interest.

That fake concern also has the added benefit of supplying ammunition for both sides to sneer at their opposition: “Don’t you care about what happened at Christmas Island,” followed by “Wanna see that happen again do ya, what are ya then?”

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen came up with the option of extending the Malaysian “solution” to include PNG and Nauru. This would give Abbott what he wants and cut his arguments off at the knees, Bowen claimed. If Abbott continues to protest, Bowen argues, he’ll be shown up for the malicious nay saying blood-oathing troll that he is.

Plus, argued Bowen,  if an extended Malaysia “solution” acted as a deterrent to boat arrivals we could up our humanitarian intake, thus making application through the proper channels more appealing to asylum seekers than getting on a leaky boat. Bowen seems to think that would work, without going into details about where our increased humanitarian intake is to be sourced. It could well pass boat arrivals right by, and there’d still be people taking dangerous journeys because they still can’t apply for a life here any other way.

But, but, Greg Combet spluttered, not Nauru! There’s some 10 years of TV footage of Julia Gillard bagging Nauru! Imagine what would happen if Abbott decided to trot a few years worth of that out, especially considering what Abbott’s done with footage of Gillard declaring there’ll be no carbon tax on her watch!  Ooooh Aaaah! It doesn’t bear imagining!

At the end of the day Gillard herself decided Nauru was off the table, presumably not wanting to look as if she doesn’t know what she’s doing on this issue yet another time because Abbott will slaughter her with it yet another time.

See? I told you. All about Abbott. Human beings? What are they and why are they relevant? Please stay on topic, we’ve got a lot to get through before Abbott starts up again.

Because of this politicking we may end up with decent on-shore processing options that are some way to the left of the options the Gillard government has been so rabidly pursuing, so for this Tony Abbott, much thanks. However, if Abbott wins the next election of course he will do a great big dismantling of everything, and having crawled laboriously up the ladder to comparative decency we’ll again be thrust back down amongst the venomous snakes of fear, self-interest, and xenophobia.

Now I ask you Mr Abbott, catholic ex-seminarian, what would Jesus do about asylum seekers? Turn back the boats? Indefinitely imprison them and their children?

At least Julia Gillard doesn’t pretend to have Christian values, well, mostly she doesn’t, only when the Australian Christian Lobby makes her.

Then there’s the curious question of who in Cabinet is leaking like an Indonesian fishing boat and why?

For another good read on the current parlous state of our political affairs as constructed by the media have a look at this piece  over at the Watermelon Blog:  Time to start again, and the whole cycle is repeated with new leader, the political party discovering, belatedly, that changing leader doesn’t stop instability (a media creation in fact), the instability having nothing to do with who the actual leader is, but merely being the signal for the media to begin a new round of destabilisation, writes David Horton.

Related articles

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

On-shore processing rules so suck it up and play nice

14 Oct

It was a grim-faced PM who held a press conference yesterday evening to announce her decision to withdraw proposed amendments to the Migration Act that would enable the government to send asylum seekers to Malaysia.

Since the High Court re- interpreted our understanding of the Migration Act, a surly and humiliated PM declared, and until Opposition Leader Tony Abbott comes to his senses (if he’s got any) and throws his support behind the bill, the government is forced to continue with on-shore processing and there’ll be boats. There will be boats! And every boat will be on Tony Abbott’s sense-less head!

Though of course, Abbott insists it’s all Gillard’s fault and any increase in boat arrivals is entirely down to her.

That a good result comes from such prolonged bitching, moaning, carping and politicking with the lives of human beings by both major parties is something to give us all hope. No matter how hard they’ve tried, neither party has been able to reintroduce off-shore processing, and to add icing to the cake, they’ve nobody to blame but themselves.

Not that I’m complaining. It’s been a circuitous journey, expensive, cruel, duplicitous and xenophobic and it’s ended in a much more decent outcome than either leader ever wanted. The dark side lost the battle all by itself.

This ought to be another valuable lesson to both Abbott and Gillard on the futility of allowing politics and personal animosity to dominate policy. There’s no explanation for Gillard persisting with the bill, given it had no hope of passing the Senate, unless she saw it as a tactical victory over Abbott if the bill was passed in the Lower House. Another thwarted miscalculation inspired by personal feeling?

In the event that more asylum seekers arrive than we have room for in detention centres, the overflow will be given community detention with work privileges. Surely now it is only a matter of time before mandatory detention of practical necessity is restricted, and we join other countries in humanely allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while their claims are assessed. The cost benefit is enormous: it costs us 90 per cent less to have refugees in the community than it does to keep them in detention.

Gillard’s attempt to snatch right-wing asylum seeker policies away from the Coalition is a spectacular failure. It’s given the Opposition the opportunity to paint themselves humane, and Gillard as lacking in compassion and heart. It’s incensed many Labor supporters who’ve had to watch as the party’s moved further and further away from their platform on refugees. Gillard made a fool of herself from the outset with the very silly and alarmingly premature East Timor proposition, and it’s gone down hill from there.

The PM is now faced with enacting a policy that is more lenient and humane than it was before she negotiated the doomed Malaysia “solution.” The 4,000 refugees we agreed to accept from Malaysia in return for the 800 we planned to send there, will be absorbed into our usual humanitarian intake. If the Gillard government wants to give more people a better chance of a good life in Australia, they could start by increasing that intake.

A regional processing centre is still a realistic goal, not hurriedly cobbled together in a politically-driven “Malaysian solution” that was at best short term, but a centre created in conjunction with others in the region and the UN.

Gillard and Abbott have been dragged kicking and screaming into maintaining on-shore processing. No doubt if we ever see an Abbott-led government the whole thing will start again and he’ll bring back Nauru, but for one brief shining moment we have something of a respite in this running, ulcerated sore that is Australia’s asylum seeker policy. The sustained collision of dark with dark resulted in a large crack, and the light got in. For this relief, much thanks.

Related articles

Tags: , , , , , ,

Bloody oath, there’ll be blood on the tracks by bedtime

13 Oct

Not so very long ago Opposition Leader Tony Abbott offered to sell his arse if he had to, if that’s what it would take to be Prime Minister. He made this offer to Tony Windsor,who as far as I’m aware would be entirely uninterested in buying or even renting Australia’s best known budgie-smuggler butt, especially after viewing images of the butt’s owner emerging from the waves at Manly (Manly??Manly?) virginity renewed just like Aphrodite but unlike the goddess, blatantly exhibiting steroid-like shrinkage.

I mean, that’s not much of a package in return for the highest political office in the land. Is it?

Now Budgie-butt has taken to swearing blood oaths. Which you probably have to do if you want to restore a smidgen of credibility after telling everybody not to believe anything you’ve said unless it’s written down. He keeps raising the stakes, while others would rather see him impaled on one. Through the heart then add plenty of garlic.

The blood oath has a colourful and eclectic history. For example, in the Church of the Latter Day Saints, participants in “endowment” ceremonies are required to swear a blood oath that they will never reveal the procedures required to prepare the chosen to become kings, queens and priests in the afterlife.  Budgie-butt believes in the afterlife, wanted to be a priest before he wanted to be PM, and given his willingness to sell his arse, may be more than passingly interested in queens.

“Blood Oath” is also the title of the sixth album by death metal band Suffocation. This album contains a track called “Marital Decimation” recorded on their previous album “Breeding the Spawn.” The phrase “breeding the spawn” generally refers to an activity engaged in by the Devil and cruelly perpetrated upon sleeping women who wake up covered in bloody scratches and go on to give birth to something too awful to show onscreen. Budgie-butt believes in the Devil and his implacable anti-abortion stance would not permit even the Devil’s spawn to be terminated. Another connection! Yeah!

Moving forward. Blood Oath is also the title of the 39th episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In this episode three legendary Klingon warriors meet with Dax prior to embarking on a vengeance crusade. Now vengeance crusades have a long Christian history with which the Opposition Leader must have at least a passing acquaintance. As well, Mr Abbott is possessed of a pair of ears that bear a strong resemblance to those of Dr Spock, and I’m not talking about the great late authority on bringing up baby.

Finally, a blood oath can be taken between real brothers, or men who are unrelated but nevertheless feel strongly bonded in a common cause. In this ceremony, an incision is made in the flesh and blood from both parties mingles, signifying life-long commitment.

It has been argued that this last blood oath ritual is an unconscious displacement of homosexual desire. It would be unsavoury of me to pursue this notion, given the selling arse matter I referred to earlier, and bearing in mind the pickle fledgling tweeper Julian Burnside  found himself in with regard to his ill-considered tweet.

Anyways, it’s likely Freud who made this observation, and we all know how he liked to mess with people’s minds.

Now the only question that remains is which is worse: to call Julia Gillard a “scrag” or Tony Abbott “Budgie-butt?” The former is sexist. The latter is offensive to little tweety birds and the question is rhetorical.

Related articles

Tags: , , , ,

Great Danes

12 Oct

  Guest post today by Gerard Oosterman, farmer, artist and blogger who asks why didn’t Tony Abbott get a fat tax up when he had the chance? Well?

Don’t let fat stand in the way of Neo-liberalism and the Markets.

Here we go again. I am hardly up and hoisting on my morning coat, and what do I see on opening The Australian (art and TV section) but a largish article expanding on last week’s news about the Danish Fat Tax (DFT), and giving some rather interesting snippets of insight into a country that likes to prevent trouble rather than react afterwards.

The Australian waxes lyrically on about how Finland and Romania are also going to implement this tax. Now, the curious but very enlightening part of this article is how those Nordic countries seem to govern. It’s heart-warming again, isn’t it? First let us reflect that Denmark has taken a turn to the left with a female leader  Ms Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who, nota bene, happens to be the daughter-in-law of the former British Labour leader Neil Kinnock…

Ms Thorning-Schmidt came to power last month promising to increase taxes on banks and high earners to pay for more spending on health and schools. Eyes agog please! She got into power promising to increase taxes! The fat tax had already been attempted by the outgoing conservative government, to no avail. Their promise to increase taxation wasn’t big enough and the practical Danes booted them out. Can this tale get any better? Yes, it can.

Denmark has a low obesity rate of 10% with a special tax on high sugar content foods such as soft drinks and sweets having been in place for some years. It is the highest taxed developed country with a VAT of 25% on top of everything else. With these taxes one would have thought there would be riots and blood on the streets daily, but no, nothing like that on the news. On the contrary, I don’t get the impression the Danes are particularly unhappy with their lot.

England is generally known as being loath to take action of any kind too rapidly with their fondness for ‘order, order’ instead, but are slowly considering a fat tax as well. Previously, like here in Australia, they preferred to nudge people into better food and eating habits. Any form of tax to force things along is traditionally thought of as forming corrupting ‘Nanny State’ habits, implying that the UK is some kind of dream socially equal paradise already.

With a wild guess that Australia might have had a much lower obesity rate some years ago, it would not be all that unreasonable to assume that our world reputation as the fattest on earth could have been nipped in the bud by none other than…our intrepid potentially disastrous future leader, the honourable…., I give you……. Tony Abbott…. order, order,… some years ago.

Yep, that’s right, wasn’t he a health minister, health and ageing some 10 years ago? Before that there were other Liberal Health ministers. While obesity started to impact on general health with a blowing out of associated diseases, nothing was done. Not even the banning of TV advertisements of bad foods during children’s programmes. Nothing must impede the “markets”. (Wasn’t it lovely to read Andrew (Twiggy) Forrest doubled his salary and collected a handy $48 million in dividends from his company in just the one year, FMG?) Now there is the  market working for you.

With our fondness for Neo-Liberalism and letting Markets do the walking for us we now seem to have reaped a nasty fat bug. That’s of course apart from homelessness, our miserable state of mental health, the aboriginal disaster, old age care, hosts of other collapsing societal benefits including our hostile and unfriendly manner of dealing with a few thousand boat people. Yes, indeed, a more prosperous and freer society but not a more equal society. A bit of a looming lemon really. Oh, for just a bit of Denmark.

To markets, to markets to buy a fat pig…Home again, home again…

Gerard blogs at  Oosterman Treats Blog

Related articles

Tags: , , ,

The godification of children; the bizarre marriage of anti raunch feminism with the religious right.

10 Oct

Evangelical Christian children’s pastor Becky Fischer takes several hundred children aged from around six to early teenage, and some of their parents, to a fundamentalist boot camp at Devil’s Lake, North Dakota for a weekend of indoctrination into the principles of  evangelical Christianity (ABC 2, Sunday October 9, “Jesus Camp”)

One of these principles is founded on the belief that there’s a dire need for the merging of church and state in the USA, to be achieved through what she describes as a war to reclaim America for Jesus. This war is a just war, founded in the truth because they know The Truth,the pastor claims, and everyone else is lost to God.

Pastor Becky is taking a leaf out of the Muslims’ book, she reveals. If they can train kids to be suicide bombers for the sake of their God, why can’t she train kids to give their lives for the one true God, albeit metaphorically. She just needs them before they turn seven, she adds.

One extremely articulate and intelligent little girl tells us that some people do die for God and they are MARTYRS. Like, wow!

There’s a cardboard cutout of George W. Bush, role model for the successful integration of the two powers. There’s emotion-driven prayer meetings where little kids fall sobbing, wailing and shaking on the floor. The poor little buggers, by now in a state of frightening emotional extremity, cry out their sinfulness, thrash their arms and legs about, and beg Jesus to forgive them. The adults howl praise the Lord as the little ones noisily repent.

Once cleansed by a few drops of water out of a plastic bottle administered by Pastor Becky, the kids are declared born again, welcomed into the Lord’s army, and instruction on their mission as soldiers in the fight to get America back on the path of righteousness begins.

One of the most important battles they’ll face, they’re told, is the battle to stop abortion. They must pray to God to end all abortive procedures, a very creepy man in blue jeans and scarlet tee-shirt with “Life” printed on it in large black letters, tells them. The future of millions of unborn babies is in their young hands. They have the opportunity to make the difference between unborn babies living, or dying before they even get a chance to breathe. Jesus wants them to save the babies.

There’s not a dry eye in the house. The children are whipped up into a state of febrile fanaticism. The adults have no apparent compunction about involving young children in abortion issues, a form of child sexualization that is truly disgraceful, and never mentioned by activists as harmful.

The man in the red shirt  shows the kids little plastic models of a foetus through the stages of gestation. Kids start screaming, swaying, and speaking in tongues. Heavy metal Christian rock music gets them and keeps them in the zone. “We’re kickin’ it for Christ!” the children scream.

The man in the red shirt tapes tiny plastic babies to the palms of the kids’ hands with red duct tape. He next places the red duct tape across the children’s mouths, silencing them. Written on the tape is the word “Life.”

Then he takes the children to Washington to demonstrate against abortion on Capitol Hill.

Meantime, Pastor Becky tells them they must not read Harry Potter, for Potter is a warlock and God hates warlocks and witchcraft. Harry Potter would have been put to death in the Old Testament, she tells them. One child is bewildered and a little unnerved when later at lunch, other kids at his table tell him he looks a lot like Harry. Will he be metaphorically put to death? Maybe he needs to change his glasses?

In their ordinary lives the kids make no moves without first asking if God would like what they’re considering doing. They have no life outside of their religion. Many of them are home-schooled in creationism, and taught that global warming is irrelevant, given that we are on earth for such a short time before ascending to heaven so why worry? In fact some 75 per cent of home-schooled children in the US come from evangelical families, of which there are some 80 million.

In Australia, right-wing Christian conservative and pro lifer Melinda Tankard Reist, editor of the recently released Big Porn Inc, a collection of anti pornography writings, is also an anti free choice advocate. This is a link to an article Tankard Reist wrote for the Canberra Times in 1997, that has recently been posted on anti abortion website  “Abortion Concern.”

In the article Tankard Reist argues that the pro-choice rhetoric ignores the situations of women who’ve had bad abortion experiences.  She calls for the re-examination of the “pro-choice orthodoxy”, citing testimonials she’s collected for her book on the reactions some women suffer after an abortion.

Tankard Reist’s conclusion is that because there are women who suffer as a consequence of abortion, the procedure ought not to be allowed. Which is a little like arguing that because some women suffer adverse reactions as a consequence of marriage, all marriage should be banned. It’s the all or nothing, you’re with us or against us, George Bush fundamentalist mentality that is the hallmark of politically right-wing evangelical Christianity, and Tankard Reist is right in that zone.

Tankard Reist’s lesser known co-editor, academic Abigail Bray, is reputedly a left-wing feminist whom one would expect to be soundly pro-choice, ideologically, emotionally and intellectually opposed to Tankard Reist’s entrenched anti choice and right-wing religious position. Nevertheless the two women have managed to overcome their differences in the production of Big Porn Inc. This union of left wing and sometimes radical feminism, and right-wing Christian evangelical conservatism is an uneasy marriage, one would think, in which both parties are called upon to seriously compromise core beliefs in order to achieve a supposedly greater good, that of preventing pornography and what both parties perceive as the pornification and sexualisation of the young.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Big Porn Inc has received a good deal of promotion from the ABC, and indeed, will be launched in Brisbane later this week by the ABC’s online Religion and Ethics editor, Scott Stephens.

Tankard Reist has been described by UNSW academic Zora Simic in her 2011 paper Anti-raunch Feminism: An Australian Case Study, which can be found on her website and is a very good read for anyone interested in feminism in Australia today, as Australia’s most public feminist voice, dethroning such long time luminaries as Eva Cox of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Anti-raunch feminism is a feminist protest against what is perceived as a dominant cultural hypersexualization of women and girls, in which so-called “raunchy” behaviour (pole dancing, for example) clothing, make up, music etc is thought to dehumanize, “pornify” and “sexualize”  women and girls, creating a false sense of empowerment from behaviour that in reality, the protesters believe, is degrading and objectifying.

Zimic informatively unpacks Tankard Reist’s evolution from Senator Brian Harradine’s bioethics advisor during the period when Harradine managed to prevent Australian aid to developing countries from including reproductive education, and also managed to ban Australian women’s access to the “morning after” pill, RU-486.

Tankard Reist went on to found the conservative pro-life Women’s Forum Australia, an organisation supported by then Prime Minister John Howard, Pentecostal Family First Senator Stephen Fielding, and Catholic Opposition Leader and former Coalition Health Minister Tony Abbott. In 2004, Abbott called for a debate on what he termed the “epidemic of abortion” in Australia. Kevin Rudd also endorsed WFA when he was ever so briefly PM and favoured doorstop interviews on Sundays as he came out of church.

As Simic writes, it appears that Tankard Reist, with the assistance of feminists such as Bray and Nina Funnell, has managed to blend an anti-abortion platform with the anti raunch culture some feminists despise and see as a backward step for women. Both parties have apparently decoupled from their traditional women’s reproductive concerns, and neither side is at present anyway, making any reference to the other’s opposing views on abortion, or pursuing their own.

Tankard Reist is currently keeping very quiet about her pro-life beliefs and her connections to the conservative Christian Right. For example on her website where she publishes testimonials from organisations who’ve hired her as a speaker, the Australian Christian Lobby is conspicuously absent, though she has been engaged by them several times.

The marriage of convenience between anti raunch feminism and right-wing religious conservatism is to say the least bizarre. When you lie down with dogs you get up with fleas is a maxim that could be employed by either party about the other. Have the anti raunch feminists turned their backs on pro-choice, sacrificing it to some perceived greater good? Have the Christian conservatives temporarily agreed to silence their rabid anti choice rhetoric in pursuit of more mainstream and easily attained goals, such as whipping up outrage about the sexualization of children?  How long can their differences be papered over, given the great big elephants in both their rooms? Is it possible to trust any of them? Do they all have hidden agendas? Are any of them what they seem?

At least with Pastor Becky Fischer, what you see is what you get.

Related articles

Tags: , , , , , , ,

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →