Qohel

Make a Difference

Tag: labor (Page 1 of 2)

Hate Mail To Pro Gay Marriage MPs

June 10, 2012 / / 0 Comments

The Sydney Morning Herald breathlessly reports that members of Federal Parliament who are supporters of gay marriage have been receiving hate mail.

Greens MP Adam Brandt claimed some of the mail he had received was vitriolic and said “The attacks and homophobia we have all experienced on Twitter, Facebook and the street will not deter us from standing up for what is right.”

Cor! Poor beggars. Let’s see some of this hate mail then.

The SMH gives two examples.

One letter said “A small minority of heterosexuals fail their biological reality and as a consequence of dysfunctional experiences, developmental and emotional immaturity become addicted to homosexual practices. ‘Unhealthy addictions need healthy solutions and redefining marriage will not heal biological self-deception and self-delusional fantasies.”

“Another letter said MPs were trying to indoctrinate children ”with compulsory homosexual propaganda in violation of parental rights.”

Umm… Nothing too hateful in either of those really. Mr Brandt may disagree with the views expressed, but that does not make them homophobic or hateful.

As for the comment about homosexual propaganda being forced on children in public schools, has Mr Brandt seen SA’s SHINE curriculum? Children have to participate, and it explicitly portrays homosexual and lesbian relationships as acceptable, healthy and normal.

The SMH has fallen for another Greens/Labor left attempt to portray anyone who questions the normalisation of homosexual behaviour as dim-witted and hateful .

If the case for gay marriage is so strong, let’s hear some real arguments instead of this constant and desperate demonising of anyone who disagrees.

On The Persistent Promulgation Of Platitudes

December 27, 2011 / / 1 Comment

It is a tad disappointing that church leaders trot out the same bland comments about illegal immigrants year after year. You might hope that if all they can up with is platitudes, they could at least try to find some new ones.

But no. This year, yet again, we heard that Jesus was a refugee, and that this means we have an obligation to be warm and welcoming to anyone who arrives here, no matter where they come from. We are asked to imagine the fear felt by Jesus’ family as they fled the violence of Herod’s persecution, and to understand that refugee families feel the same fear and desperation.

These are worthwhile thoughts. Or they would be if church leaders had not battered us with them every Christmas for the last twenty years.

Just as cliches in writing are to be avoided like the pox, cliches in preaching are to be avoided like polio, and for the same reason. Cliches become cliches because they express a thought strikingly. They make you think. As soon as they become cliches they cease to express anything very much. They are just boring and predictable and don’t encourage thought at all. It is the same with lazy, cliched preaching.

Church leaders who talk year after year about the need to be compassionate to refugees are not going to convince anyone, because everyone is already convinced. We all know we need to find a compassionate way to deal with refugees, including those who make their way to Australia illegally.

What most Australians understand, but which seems to have escaped the bishops and moderators, is the complexity of going from good feelings and wanting to do the right thing, to formulating and enacting policy which really does do some good.

Under the Howard government, people smuggling and illegal immigration had slowed to a trickle. That left more resources for the Department of Immigration to allocate to refugees who were in greatest need, and to supporting those refugees in their transition to life in Australia. When Labor was elected there were fewer than 400 people in immigration detention. Now there are over 4,000. That number is growing rapidly as new boats arrive every week.

At least 400 people have died in transit since Labor came to office. Yet there has been no acceptance of responsibility, no acknowledgement that the kinder policies demanded by churches and refugee advocate groups have been responsibile for the current cruel and expensive mess. Instead, the same people are serving up the same tripe about the ‘need for compassion.’

A lack of compassion is not the problem. A lack of willingness to think is. If church leaders really want to help, they need to stop the reflexive bagging of conservative politicians and recognise that it is possible for politicians on both sides of parliament, and for ordinary people, to feel the same depth of concern, but to have completely different ideas about the best way forward.

The best way forward, of course, is the one that works. What works is stopping illegal immigration, and concentrating resources on bringing to Australia people who are most in need, and who are most likely to share, or to come to share, Australia’s key values of rule of law, equality for men and women, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, fair work for fair pay, generosity and ‘having a go.’

And by way of contrast, thank God for Queen Elizabeth.

Julia and the Toddler Team

August 24, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Julia’s toddler team is certainly entertaining.

Australian politics have not been so interesting since the days of Joh and Russ.

Of course, ‘May you live in interesting times’ is a well known curse, and this government has certainly been a curse for Australia.

This afternoon Julia sabotaged Question Time by simply getting up and leaving. Another thirty or so of the toddler team did the same.

This was in response to Tony Abbott’s questions about Gillard’s continuing support for Craig Thomson.

Why would the Prime Minister do something that confirms the general view that the current crop of Labor politicians are immature, arrogant and self-serving?

I guess because the alternative would be to answer the question. And answering the question would show the Labor Party in an even worse light than acting like a bunch of spoilt two year olds.

The end is nigh!

Julia’s Advice to Michael Clarke

April 9, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Well, I guess that’s what she was trying to do; offer advice to the Australian cricket team as they prepare to face Bangladesh in Dhaka.

That’s the trouble with Julia – you have to guess what she is trying to do. Partly because the outcomes she achieves never seem to match her stated intentions.

We’ll reduce the number of asylum seekers held in detention (by implementing policies which invite huge numbers to come).

We’ll increase employment (by punishing businesses and imposing heavy new taxes on our most productive industries).

You get the idea.

So I’m only guessing when I say that Julia must have been trying to offer our new test captain some helpful advice.

Her suggestion was something she calls the ‘hyperbowl.’

Based on her implementation of this technique, the hyperbowl can be summarised as follows:

A long run up, slow at first, then at a frantic pace towards the end. A flamboyant display is made of bowling with the right arm, but the actual delivery is made under-arm with the left.

That could work.

A Letter to Andrew Wilkie

March 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Dear Mr Wilkie,

I have been disappointed by your claims of racism in the Liberal party.

As far as I am aware, no Liberal or National Party member of Federal Parliament has made disparaging claims or remarks about any group or person on the basis of race.

Some members of the Liberal Party have expressed concerns about the willingness of some members of a particular religious group to accept Australian law and values.

Concerns about a religious group are not racism.

Those concerns are shared by many Australians.

Australians in general do not have the same level of concern about other religious groups such as Hindus or Buddhists or Lutherans.

If you believe concerns about Islam to be unfounded, then I suggest you counter them with facts showing that Islam genuinely is a religion of peace, that Muslim attitudes to women and homosexuals are compatible with those held by mainstream Australian society, and that Muslim leaders in Australia are consistent in their denunciation of violence and terrorism, and supportive of Australian values and alliances, eg with Israel and the US.

Claims of racism are factually incorrect. They are dishonest.

They will win you temporary headlines.

But Australians are not stupid. False accusations of racism will not distract from this government’s incompetence and broken promises.

Sent this morning. I am guessing I will receive a form reply consisting of a list of imagined Liberal Party offences, and no attempt at all to respond to community concerns with facts.

Same Old Bogeyman

February 11, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Ron Burgess at Business Spectator describes Australian uber-alarmist Flim Flannery as ‘Labor’s new bogeyman.

I am not sure in what sense Flannery or his message are new. He has been constantly, amusingly wrong, but at least he has been consistent.

Ron says he doubts that Australian politicians, even those most stridently in the AGW (warming) camp, really believe what they are employing Tim Flannery to tell us to believe.

After all, you can judge what people really believe by what they do. If politicians like Wong and Garrett and Gillard really believed that human activity was causing catastrophic global warming, they would stop doing climate warmy stuff like flying everywhere and living in huge houses, and they would be doing their best to convince everyone else to do the same. But they’re not.

There’s an opnion that despite what they say, leftist politicians don’t really believe this. After all there’s no evidence for AGW and never has been (not that reality is a major factor in leftist policy development). They only espouse global warming alarmism because it gives an opportunity for restrictions on industry, and greater government control over almost every aspect of the lives of ordinary citizens.

I disagree. I think that on this, Wong, Garrett, Gillard, Turnbull, etc really do believe what they say they believe. People’s actions are not always consistent with what they believe, even if those beliefs are deeply and sincerely held.

In the case of politicians, the need to get re-elected is pre-eminent. After all, having high ideals and believing the right things is important, but if you are not in power, you can’t change law or policy. So it’s better to stay in power and do what you can, even if you think that is not enough, than to be out of power and not be able to do anything.

Here is where Ron Burgess’ assessment of this appointment is spot on. He says Flannery’s real job is to ‘put the wind up Australians.’ For non Australian readers, that means to scare people.

On paper, the primary role of Tim Flannery’s new position is to ‘provide independent information for members of the community … on three areas in particular: firstly, the science of climate change and its impacts on this country…’

We all know he is not going to do that. Independent information on the science of climate change is the last thing Flannery is interested in. He has made huge amounts of money by ignoring climate science. What he is an expert in is scaring people. Good choice for a bogeyman.

Except that, as I noted above, his scary predictions have been consistently wrong.

The problem for the Labor government is that this fact, and this appointment, make it clear right from the beginning that there is no objectivity, no interest in a fair assessment of climate science, no commitment to truth.

People are not buying this. The bogeyman just isn’t scary anymore.

Update: Saturday – Andrew Bolt has a useful and extensive list of Flannery’s failed predictions, and the cost imposed on the community by those who believed them.

Clem 7 Tunnel Farce – Just Like the NBN

February 5, 2011 / / 1 Comment

OK, so Brisbane needs better traffic systems. But this absurdly expensive, oversold, poorly researched, underused tunnel?

The Clem 7 tunnel would never have been built if actual costs and usage had been known beforehand.

RiverCity is carrying $1.3 billion in debt and wrote down its $1.56 billion of assets to $258 million at June 30 last year.

What the heck were they thinking?

At least it only cost taxpayers and private investors about $3 billion.

The NBN is even more overpriced and unnecessary. $40 billion – $6000 for every household in Australia whether they want it or not – when existing and wireless technologies can provide similar speeds at a fraction of the cost with no public investment?

What the heck are they thinking?

The only internet infastructure sector that genuinely needs taxpayer money is rural and remote Australia, where an investment of about $3 billion into satellite and wireless technologies would provide speeds comparable with those currently available to city users.

Historic Health Reforms?

February 5, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Right up there with the great moral challenge of our time.

Having a single government funder of health services would help to prevent some of the bickering between Sate and federal governments, and reduce some of the cost of bureacratic oversight in health service delivery. So more money could be spent on actual medical care.

Well, maybe that’s wishful thinking. Reducing the size of a bureaucracy is a bit like trying to clean out the Augean stables. The crap just keeps flowing in. But Hercules managed it, so why not Julia Gillard?

Oh. Right.

Anyway, Julia seems to be thinking the same thing. Or something. Because the ‘important, historic Labor health reforms’ of 60% funding of state health services in return for a reduced portion of GST might be replaced by something else.

Something like the Liberal Party’s policy of direct funding to hospitals, bypassing state government coffers and management altogether.

This is a good idea, for the reasons outlined above. Fewer layers of government oversight mean more local autonomy, more responsiveness to community needs, less cost, more money for services.

But the delays and dithering make this yet another stuff up, run around, prevaricating around the bush episode by this utterly inept government.

Federal opposition health spokesman Peter Dutton says Prime Minister Julia Gillard makes her predecessor Kevin Rudd and former environment minister Peter Garrett look competent.

The Prime Minister is more incompetent than Kevin Rudd? Or the Minister for Plastic Bags and Pussy Cats?

Amazingly, this might be true. Has anything they have done worked? Has any policy when implemented had the results we were promised?

Sophie Mirabella

November 19, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Sophie Mirabella is one of my favourite Australian politicians.

She is hard working, honest and intelligent – a possible future Prime Minister, and one who would be vastly more effective, in part because she has vastly more integrity, than the present incumbent.

Ben-Peter Terpstra calls her a Greek goddess in comments on the Australian Conservative website on an article by Sophie in The Punch.

Sophie offers Julia Gillard some helpful advice. Namely, mean what you say, say what you mean, and do what’s right.

I won’t quote from either Ben or Sophie. Both are worth reading in full. And the comments on Ben’s article are an amusing dialogue between shallow leftist trolls and reasonable people attempting to reason with them.

P.S.

‘Mean what you say, say what you mean, and do what’s right’ could be Sarah Palin’s motto.

Despite liberalist frenzy and legacy media blackwashing, people like her because she is straightforward, has faced the problems they face, loves her family and her country, knows how to run things, and has a vision for the future.

The usual liberal complaint about anyone who disgrees with them is “He’s stupid, ‘She’s stupid.’

But I defy anyone to read Sarah Palin’s thoughtful and well-constructed open letter to new Republican members of Congress, and believe anything other than that she is caring, intelligent, and capable.

What The Heck?

September 7, 2010 / / 0 Comments

The blighters were just playing games when they checked Tony Crook’s intentions.

What was the point of that? Just to prove that they are the big boys now? No one in the playground is going to push them around, cause it’s their turn to do the pushing?

Based on their performance over the last week, these guys will be holding the country to ransom for as long as this dismal government lasts.

I wasn’t fond of the title ‘The Three Amigos.’

But maybe it is not so inappropriate. In the film of that name, the three amigos were really three complete drongos, pretend cowboys in flashy outfits, who were so dumb they thought ‘infamous’ meant really, really famous.

Maybe our three amigos thought the same thing. Except that now it’s the two amigos, Max Hatter having decided to go it on his own and support the Coalition.

Except that a better title would be ‘tushki.’

It sounds like it should mean ‘little arse,’ and that would be appropriate too, but it doesn’t

In February of Viktor Yanukovych won the Ukrainian presidential election with the smallest possible margin, and the support of probably about a third of Ukrainians.

Following that election, 16 parliamentary delegates deserted their own party, and the people who had voted for them, to enable Yanukovych to form government.

They have become known as the tushki. It is a Russian word, used as an insult. It means ‘roadkill.’

As the German political scientist Andreas Umland noted in late March in the Kyiv Post, “Ukraine is now less democratic than it was. . . . With their change of allegiance the tushki have grossly misrepresented the preferences of the Ukrainian voters.”

Welcome to the new Australia.

Tony Needs To Toughen Up

September 2, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Brandt has signed up with Labor after Bob Brown was promised a carbon tax. Wilkie has signed up with Labor after he was promised a renovated hospital in Hobart.

Tony Abbott now needs to be absolutely clear about three things.

Firstly, the Liberal party will not be buying votes. It will not be making infrastructure or funding promises to independents or anyone else, if those promises come at the expense of other Australians.

Mr Abbott needs to make it clear that funds will allocated in line with policy and need. There will be no sweetheart deals. He will not be pressured into making unreasonable promises to a few, which the many will have to pay for.

Secondly, there can be no unconditional promise to remain in government for the full three years. Such a promise would be unreasonable at any time. It is completely unreasonable at this time.

The Greens and their Labor buddies will control the Senate. It is almost certain they will use that power to block supply or stop or delay crucial legislation. If the Liberal party is able to form government, it will only govern with the consent of the Greens and Labor.

That is not a situation in which a party and its leaders can responsibly promise to stay in government for a fixed term.

Finally, Tony Abbott and the Liberals must now emphasise, over and over again, the fiscal responsibility of the Coalition, the consistently better economic results under a Coalition government.

The Liberals may still lose this election, and if they do, the country will find itself suffocating under a staggering level of economic incompetence.

The next few years will be dire for small business, for the mining and manufacturing sectors, for rural and remote communities – for everyone who actually produces useful, valuable goods and services.

I hope Tony Abbott can still win. That would save us from the worst of the combined malice and ineptitude of a Greens/Labor alliance.

But if not Tony, then at least lose with honour.

Election Musings

August 24, 2010 / / 1 Comment

The Australian Electoral Commission has declared Brisbane for the Liberals.

That leaves only Hasluck and Corangamite in doubt. Both still too close to call. But in Hasluck, Family First, Christian Democratic Party and Climate Sceptic preferences will all go strongly to the Liberals. That, along with the fact that postal and absentee votes tend to favour the Liberals, should be enough to get them over the line.

I said on Saturday night that the Liberals would probably need Corangamite to win.

Sally-Anne Brown’s preferences will go almost entirely to Labor. Family First’s mostly to the Liberals. As the votes presently stand, Greens’ preferences would need to run almost two to one Labor to Liberal for Labor to retain the seat. And they are running almost two to one. The only hope for the Liberals here is for Sarah Henderson to come in very strongly in the last 15% of the vote. But there are only about 600 votes separating the Labor and Liberal, so this is entirely possible.

If Hasluck and Corangamite come to the Liberals, and though Sarah is behind I think this is the likely result, final numbers will be, Labor 71, Liberal 74, 1 Green, 4 independents.

If the Liberals win Corangamite, Labor will not be able to form government, even with the Green and three of the independents. The Liberals will only need two of the independents, and will get them.

If Labor wins Corangamite, final numbers will be Labor 72, Liberal 73, 1 Green, 4 independents.

For Labor to form government they would need the Green and three independents – that is, all of the independents except Bob Katter, who, even though he has no love for the Nationals, will not co-operate in returning a manifestly inept Labor government.

Oakeshott seems to me a compete dimwit. Anyone is who hopes for a cabinet lead by Julia Gillard and starring Malcolm Turnbull.

So it may come down to Tony Windsor. But he doens’t want nuclear power, and thinks the NBN is a great idea. So not much brain power there either.

If Labor wins Corangamite, they may be able to form a very untidy government.

If Oakshott and Windsor have any integrity in relation to the trust placed in them by their electorates, they will support Tony Abbott, and help him to form a government which will put an end to the astonishing waste and incompetence of the last few years.

If they don’t, they are both likely never to be elected again, and justly – they will have betrayed the people who voted for them.

So… 65% chance the Liberals will win Corangamite. If so, they will be the next government.

If Labor wins Corangamite, it depends on the integrity of two of the independents, and their fear of not being re-elected if they do the wrong thing.

I am hopeful.

PS

I got a very polite email this afternoon from Corangamite independent candidate Sally-Anne Brown:

I was interested to read on your website in the article ‘election musings’ that my preferences would go almost entirely to the ALP in the seat of Corangamite.
 
I am writing to advise you – in case you were under the impression I did a direct preference to the ALP in Saturday’s election – that in fact I did not preference one major party ahead of the other – leaving this for voters to decide ie: I did a ‘split ticket’.

I hadn’t suggested that she had made a preference deal, or directed her preferences to one party over another. Rather, given her policy views, it seemed likely that those who gave their primary vote to her would be much more likely to feel an affinity to Labor than Liberal.

Sally-Anne issued a press release the day before the election explaining her position.

« Older posts

© 2024 Qohel