Late last year the federal government was dragged kicking and screaming into holding a Royal Commission into child abuse after several victims came forward and police officers told of how they were forced to abandon investigations into cases due to political pressure. Opinion polls released since the announcement have shown that 97% of Australians support the Royal Commission.
The ABC's Four Corners and 7:30 programs have been highlighting cases for a while now, and the red flags went up recently when they presented the latest disgrace by the Catholic church. It concerned a priest who had molested several victims, but the priest wasn't named. He was referred to continually as "Father F". It highlighted the chief reason why - in this country - child molestation was always referred to as the unspeakable crime and swept under the carpet. Our repressive defamation, and now privacy laws, have prevented a proper discussion about the issue and made the media reluctant to pursue cases.
If the Royal Commission is to make an impact into stopping the crime then action must be taken to grant immunity to media organisations and victims from being sued for defamation or to have other legal or administrative action taken against them. We have some of the most oppressive defamation laws in the world and the imposition of privacy and human rights BS over the top of that is just absurd. The Royal Commission will be effectively neutered if the media cannot name names and go into detail about matters being investigated. The lawyers might not like having a lucrative source of business taken away from them, but we urgently need reform in this area.
The whole issue of child molestation has been muddied over the years by waves of sexual liberation which - at various times - have muddied the water as to what acceptable and unacceptable conduct is all about.
I have experience in this field, not as a victim but as someone who heard first hand about the activities of pedophiles in my workplace. In 1992 as a 33 year old I collected shopping trolleys at a suburban shopping centre. I supervised young teens, and several other kids hung around us while we were doing our work. I started hearing disturbing stories about the bootmaker in the shopping centre, how he'd lure kids to the back of the shop and how a few of them had near misses involving him. There was a familiar pattern to the stories and the usual MO of child molesters was becoming apparent.
After more and more kids told me what was going on I said to one of them over lunch in the centre "Have you told anybody about this? Have you gone to your parents about it?" The kids told me they were too scared to say anything because they had to live in the local area and shop at the centre. I said that I would do something about it. The following morning when I woke up there was a note in my letter box telling me in no uncertain terms to keep my mouth shut or else I would find myself out of a job and in hospital.
We now live in more enlightened times when child abuse is a relatively open matter. Hopefully the victims and those nearby will not be intimidated and we can see some action taken to bring action to bear on the issue. Hiding behind legalistic niceties and being hidebound by privacy and defamation laws will help nobody and will stymie the work of the Royal Commission and sweep the more serious cases back under the carpet.
Thursday 24 January 2013
Tuesday 22 January 2013
Dump this tax on free speech
The summer silly season is usually a time of leisure for most Australians but it is also a time for politicians to announce unpopular or distasteful news. Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve is the favourite time when the newspapers either don't publish or they - and the other media - are on holidays filled with happy snaps and fluff lifted off the wire services or satellite. Communications minister Stephen Conroy announced Internet censorship on New Years Eve 2008, Treasurer Wayne Swan announced that the government would be breaking its promise to deliver a surplus three days before Christmas. One thing which has flown right under the radar is the proposed new federal anti-discrimination act which was announced two days after Ray Hadley and the other so-called shock jocks went on holiday last year.
Over the summer break, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been trying to get the issue into the news, and with journalists returning to work after the summer break a discussion has finally started.
At first glance the intention of the new act is simple. To combine the current five discrimination acts into one. So far, so good. But the bureaucrats in the Attorney-General's Department couldn't resist overstepping the mark and putting in a whole lot of new nasties which pose a very real threat to freedom of speech.
For example, the new act contains proscriptions on speech which is "insulting" or "offensive". I'm not making this up. If you say something which someone else takes offence to in any way, you could be dragged before the courts, be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and have your livelihood destroyed. The obvious example is water cooler conversation at work. If a work colleague mentions that he has bought a new Ford and you say that Holdens are better and you criticise their car, they can take you to court for being insulting or offensive. The possibilities are endless. If you come into work and someone says "good morning" and you reply "What's so good about it?" that could be deemed offensive or insulting. It would be a lawyer's picnic and clog up the courts for years.
The big problem with this sort of thing is that it would descend into "he said, she said", and people taking offence always embellish things and try and make it sound as bad as possible. I was a victim of this when I worked in the public service. A male colleague was taking leave to get married and I said "Your wife, what does he think about all this?" It was originally a quip by Bert Newton on Celebrity Squares in 1976. I was hauled before the director and told that a formal complaint had been lodged, and I was quoted as saying "What's the name of the bloke you are marrying?" Efforts to correct the record were futile, I couldn't defend myself and the complaint was upheld. That was only one of many complaints made against me, all containing supposed direct quotes and all of which were upheld. While this sort of thing might be the norm amongst work-shy bureaucrats with nothing else to do except stab each other in the back, to now have this type of pettiness and nonsense imposed onto the entire population is absolutely disgraceful.
I won't call this proposed law an anti-discrimination bill, I prefer to call it a tax on free speech. It is typical Labor pork barrelling to try and get minorities onside, but it has failed miserably.
Attorney General Nicola Roxon sent copious press releases to the gay media trumpeting that for the first time discrimination based on sexual preference would be outlawed federally. But her efforts to shore up the pink vote were shot down in flames by her boss Julia Gillard who announced that she had been having meetings with Australian Christian Lobby boss Jim Wallace and had agreed to exempt church organisations from the homosexuality clauses. So there you have it - an anti-discrimination law which discriminates. The gay media which initially welcomed the new laws are now up in arms. Not even the gays want it.
The intention of the law is far-reaching and the red flags have gone up that this free speech tax is nothing more than an attempt to stifle any criticism of the government. Alan Jones calling Gillard "Ju-liar", Ray Hadley's satirical songs about government scandals, editorials in The Australian. We haven't seen this sort of thing since Soviet Russia. When I was a kid I said to my mother that the number one song on the Moscow hit parade was called Gromyko Is An Idiot. It was a classic "as if" gag because the Soviets were so oppressive that anybody saying something like that would be either jailed or executed. So now we have the same thing in 21st Century Australia! It is something we thought we'd never see. Rather than beefing up the anti-discrimination/vilification/hate speech laws, there is a strong case for abolishing them altogether. They are a 1970s response to a 1950s problem and have long outlived their usefulness.
Public submissions are currently being sought on the proposed new laws. It is hoped that freedom-loving Aussies will bombard Roxon with negative comment and the free speech tax will be dumped completely and join Internet censorship in the legislative trashcan.
Over the summer break, organisations such as the Institute of Public Affairs have been trying to get the issue into the news, and with journalists returning to work after the summer break a discussion has finally started.
At first glance the intention of the new act is simple. To combine the current five discrimination acts into one. So far, so good. But the bureaucrats in the Attorney-General's Department couldn't resist overstepping the mark and putting in a whole lot of new nasties which pose a very real threat to freedom of speech.
For example, the new act contains proscriptions on speech which is "insulting" or "offensive". I'm not making this up. If you say something which someone else takes offence to in any way, you could be dragged before the courts, be out of pocket for thousands of dollars and have your livelihood destroyed. The obvious example is water cooler conversation at work. If a work colleague mentions that he has bought a new Ford and you say that Holdens are better and you criticise their car, they can take you to court for being insulting or offensive. The possibilities are endless. If you come into work and someone says "good morning" and you reply "What's so good about it?" that could be deemed offensive or insulting. It would be a lawyer's picnic and clog up the courts for years.
The big problem with this sort of thing is that it would descend into "he said, she said", and people taking offence always embellish things and try and make it sound as bad as possible. I was a victim of this when I worked in the public service. A male colleague was taking leave to get married and I said "Your wife, what does he think about all this?" It was originally a quip by Bert Newton on Celebrity Squares in 1976. I was hauled before the director and told that a formal complaint had been lodged, and I was quoted as saying "What's the name of the bloke you are marrying?" Efforts to correct the record were futile, I couldn't defend myself and the complaint was upheld. That was only one of many complaints made against me, all containing supposed direct quotes and all of which were upheld. While this sort of thing might be the norm amongst work-shy bureaucrats with nothing else to do except stab each other in the back, to now have this type of pettiness and nonsense imposed onto the entire population is absolutely disgraceful.
I won't call this proposed law an anti-discrimination bill, I prefer to call it a tax on free speech. It is typical Labor pork barrelling to try and get minorities onside, but it has failed miserably.
Attorney General Nicola Roxon sent copious press releases to the gay media trumpeting that for the first time discrimination based on sexual preference would be outlawed federally. But her efforts to shore up the pink vote were shot down in flames by her boss Julia Gillard who announced that she had been having meetings with Australian Christian Lobby boss Jim Wallace and had agreed to exempt church organisations from the homosexuality clauses. So there you have it - an anti-discrimination law which discriminates. The gay media which initially welcomed the new laws are now up in arms. Not even the gays want it.
The intention of the law is far-reaching and the red flags have gone up that this free speech tax is nothing more than an attempt to stifle any criticism of the government. Alan Jones calling Gillard "Ju-liar", Ray Hadley's satirical songs about government scandals, editorials in The Australian. We haven't seen this sort of thing since Soviet Russia. When I was a kid I said to my mother that the number one song on the Moscow hit parade was called Gromyko Is An Idiot. It was a classic "as if" gag because the Soviets were so oppressive that anybody saying something like that would be either jailed or executed. So now we have the same thing in 21st Century Australia! It is something we thought we'd never see. Rather than beefing up the anti-discrimination/vilification/hate speech laws, there is a strong case for abolishing them altogether. They are a 1970s response to a 1950s problem and have long outlived their usefulness.
Public submissions are currently being sought on the proposed new laws. It is hoped that freedom-loving Aussies will bombard Roxon with negative comment and the free speech tax will be dumped completely and join Internet censorship in the legislative trashcan.
Sunday 6 January 2013
Labor's muck-raking has hurt us all
The end of another year of the Gillard government has meant time for reflection on what this country has become and the terrible damage a year of savagery and personal attacks has caused to the national psyche, and how an all-out campaign to divide the community and turn people against each other has almost destroyed this once-proud country and trashed the values we hold so dear.
The year began with Labor unleashing the Abbott Abbott Abbott monster. Anything that went wrong, any bad news that happened to the governmentwas blamed on Tony Abbott and his so-called "negativity". It was extraordinary. It was almost as if the Gillard government was trying to give the impression it was the opposition and Tony Abbott was the prime minister.
These tactics were totally alien to Australia. It was a highly personal, playing the man, not the ball type of politics foreign to this country. And yes, it was foreign - introduced to the political scene by the Scottish spin doctor John MacTernan who was brought in by Gillard to try and turn her fortunes around. It was relentless. Day after day a new low in political discourse was reached. Gillard's ministers jumped onto a caravan of thuggery. Bovver boy politics personified. Mindless attacks on Tony Abbott, highly personal and damaging. Abbott's family has been deeply traumatised by this campaign and Abbott has warned them it will only get worse.
Yet despite all this, members of Gillard's cabinet are trying to deny responsibility and blame Tony Abbott for the personal attacks and the fact that public opinion of politicians has never been lower. The main person trying this on is Treasurer Wayne Swan just a few weeks after calling Abbott a thug.
When all this began, the public were horrified. The LNP won the Qld election with an all-time record majority in April and this should have been the cue to drop the attacks on Abbott. But they intensified and it became much worse. The public were browbeaten by these attacks day after day. It began affecting Abbott's popularity and the left wing Press Gallery jumped onto it with glee recommending the Libs dump Abbott and go back to the failed left wing experiment with Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
Normally US elections don't have much of an effect on Australia, but the recent November election was effectively a dry run for our own election later this year. Labor figures ingratiated themselves with the Democratic Party. They embedded themselves into the party in the leadup to the November election and used the highly personal and divisive tactics MacTernan had brought to this country in the US. Thus, Republican candidates who opposed abortion were "sexist" or "anti-woman". Other Republicans were smeared as racists and their party labelled "a refuge for old white men". "Anti-Hispanic", "WASPISH", Republicans were even called nazis or Hitler-philes.
The Republicans were completely blindsided. In the past, issues such as abortion had worked in their favour as evangelicals and other Christians would vote in vast numbers for anti-abortion candidates. But the Labor imports ruthlessly targeted black and Hispanic women who swamped the polling booths and re-elected Obama. Emboldened by their success in the US, those Labor officials have since returned to Australia and are preparing to unleash the same onslaught here.
The opinion polls have recently become varied after showing the Libs in front by up to 20 points in late 2011. Two Newspolls have shown Labor and Liberal neck and neck and one poll - the Morgan Gallup Poll - has even said that the Gillard government is five points in front and would easily win the election this year. So we can't be complacent, it is no longer a lay-down misiere.
An election won't be held until after July 1st. If it is held earlier than that it will disengage the Senate and House and a separate Senate election will have to be held during the term of the next government, making it a by-election. In the Senate election of 1967 there was a swing against the Liberal government of Harold Holt and two DLP members were elected. Something similar happened in the 1970 Senate election held during John Gorton's government. In 1973, 1974 and 1977, referendums were held to mandate Senate and House elections being both held on the same day. All three referendums were defeated. Since then, Prime Ministers have been careful to select election dates which keep the nexus in place so there will not be separate Senate elections.
A new year brings new hope and this year there is a sense of optimism that the dysfunctional agony of the hung parliament and the plague years of Labor will finally be put behind us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully the electorate will not muff it this time and we can start the long, hard task of getting the country back on its feet and bringing back the good, old traditional Australia we loved so much in days gone by.
The year began with Labor unleashing the Abbott Abbott Abbott monster. Anything that went wrong, any bad news that happened to the governmentwas blamed on Tony Abbott and his so-called "negativity". It was extraordinary. It was almost as if the Gillard government was trying to give the impression it was the opposition and Tony Abbott was the prime minister.
These tactics were totally alien to Australia. It was a highly personal, playing the man, not the ball type of politics foreign to this country. And yes, it was foreign - introduced to the political scene by the Scottish spin doctor John MacTernan who was brought in by Gillard to try and turn her fortunes around. It was relentless. Day after day a new low in political discourse was reached. Gillard's ministers jumped onto a caravan of thuggery. Bovver boy politics personified. Mindless attacks on Tony Abbott, highly personal and damaging. Abbott's family has been deeply traumatised by this campaign and Abbott has warned them it will only get worse.
Yet despite all this, members of Gillard's cabinet are trying to deny responsibility and blame Tony Abbott for the personal attacks and the fact that public opinion of politicians has never been lower. The main person trying this on is Treasurer Wayne Swan just a few weeks after calling Abbott a thug.
When all this began, the public were horrified. The LNP won the Qld election with an all-time record majority in April and this should have been the cue to drop the attacks on Abbott. But they intensified and it became much worse. The public were browbeaten by these attacks day after day. It began affecting Abbott's popularity and the left wing Press Gallery jumped onto it with glee recommending the Libs dump Abbott and go back to the failed left wing experiment with Malcolm Turnbull as leader.
Normally US elections don't have much of an effect on Australia, but the recent November election was effectively a dry run for our own election later this year. Labor figures ingratiated themselves with the Democratic Party. They embedded themselves into the party in the leadup to the November election and used the highly personal and divisive tactics MacTernan had brought to this country in the US. Thus, Republican candidates who opposed abortion were "sexist" or "anti-woman". Other Republicans were smeared as racists and their party labelled "a refuge for old white men". "Anti-Hispanic", "WASPISH", Republicans were even called nazis or Hitler-philes.
The Republicans were completely blindsided. In the past, issues such as abortion had worked in their favour as evangelicals and other Christians would vote in vast numbers for anti-abortion candidates. But the Labor imports ruthlessly targeted black and Hispanic women who swamped the polling booths and re-elected Obama. Emboldened by their success in the US, those Labor officials have since returned to Australia and are preparing to unleash the same onslaught here.
The opinion polls have recently become varied after showing the Libs in front by up to 20 points in late 2011. Two Newspolls have shown Labor and Liberal neck and neck and one poll - the Morgan Gallup Poll - has even said that the Gillard government is five points in front and would easily win the election this year. So we can't be complacent, it is no longer a lay-down misiere.
An election won't be held until after July 1st. If it is held earlier than that it will disengage the Senate and House and a separate Senate election will have to be held during the term of the next government, making it a by-election. In the Senate election of 1967 there was a swing against the Liberal government of Harold Holt and two DLP members were elected. Something similar happened in the 1970 Senate election held during John Gorton's government. In 1973, 1974 and 1977, referendums were held to mandate Senate and House elections being both held on the same day. All three referendums were defeated. Since then, Prime Ministers have been careful to select election dates which keep the nexus in place so there will not be separate Senate elections.
A new year brings new hope and this year there is a sense of optimism that the dysfunctional agony of the hung parliament and the plague years of Labor will finally be put behind us. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully the electorate will not muff it this time and we can start the long, hard task of getting the country back on its feet and bringing back the good, old traditional Australia we loved so much in days gone by.
Thursday 3 January 2013
The phony gun control debate
With the school shootings in the US we have seen a resurgence of the gun control debate. In the past this has been mostly confined to non-US countries with a lot of talk about gun nuts and crazy Americans. Within the US where cooler and more rational heads prevail, the populace has largely been protected from this nonsense and life has continued as normal. This time in the leadup to Christmas the debate has spilled over into the US, largely due to foreigners who have gained a foothold in the US media.
The so-called interviewer, British ex-pat Piers Morgan has featured heavily in this latest debate. Shouting down gun lobbyists on his CNN TV show and provoking a backlash to the extent that a White House petition has been set up to have him shipped out of the country.
The other pocket of support for gun control in the US has come from Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. Many are puzzled by this on a proudly conservative TV news network but his boss - Australian-born Rupert Murdoch - has been a supporter of gun control for many years and formed those opinions in the 1960s and '70s when he aligned his newspapers firmly against the Vietnam War.
Both Morgan and O'Reilly have held up Australia as being some sort of poster boy for gun control, citing the Howard Government's gun buy-back in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The bald figures on paper point to a reduction of guns in the community since then but those figures can best be described as bikini figures. What they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.
Legal gun ownership in Australia was reduced by the gun buy-back and a tightening of the issuing of gun licences but there is little doubt that there are now a record number of guns in this country and more gun crime overall. It has just gone underground. Anybody living in our major capital cities and accessing the media can testify to that. Almost every day we hear about drive-by shootings in Sydney. Bikie gangs and muslims have been arming themselves to the teeth. If anything, the gun control measures in this country have resulted in a minor, manageable situation escalating out of control with very few - if any - checks and balances.
We don't live in an ideal world. Occasionally mass gun deaths occur. But responding with knee-jerk arguments in favour of gun control and misrepresenting the situation in foreign countries which have gone down this path is both unhelpful and will do nobody any good in the cold, hard light of day.
The so-called interviewer, British ex-pat Piers Morgan has featured heavily in this latest debate. Shouting down gun lobbyists on his CNN TV show and provoking a backlash to the extent that a White House petition has been set up to have him shipped out of the country.
The other pocket of support for gun control in the US has come from Bill O'Reilly on Fox News. Many are puzzled by this on a proudly conservative TV news network but his boss - Australian-born Rupert Murdoch - has been a supporter of gun control for many years and formed those opinions in the 1960s and '70s when he aligned his newspapers firmly against the Vietnam War.
Both Morgan and O'Reilly have held up Australia as being some sort of poster boy for gun control, citing the Howard Government's gun buy-back in response to the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. The bald figures on paper point to a reduction of guns in the community since then but those figures can best be described as bikini figures. What they reveal is interesting but what they conceal is vital.
Legal gun ownership in Australia was reduced by the gun buy-back and a tightening of the issuing of gun licences but there is little doubt that there are now a record number of guns in this country and more gun crime overall. It has just gone underground. Anybody living in our major capital cities and accessing the media can testify to that. Almost every day we hear about drive-by shootings in Sydney. Bikie gangs and muslims have been arming themselves to the teeth. If anything, the gun control measures in this country have resulted in a minor, manageable situation escalating out of control with very few - if any - checks and balances.
We don't live in an ideal world. Occasionally mass gun deaths occur. But responding with knee-jerk arguments in favour of gun control and misrepresenting the situation in foreign countries which have gone down this path is both unhelpful and will do nobody any good in the cold, hard light of day.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)