Australia’s refugee problem has attracted global attention. This from the New York Times.
Roxon’s ambassadors: homophobic, sexist and totally inappropriate
|
The nauseating views of Warwick Marsh, revealed by Crikey following a reader’s tip yesterday, have cost him his men’s health ambassadorship. Nicola Roxon this morning described his views as abhorrent and, when he declined to repudiate them, sacked him. Good riddance and the less said about him and his loathsome ilk the better. However, Barry Williams, head of the Lone Fathers’ Association, has “publicly and unequivocally disowned” the homophobic views pushed by the “Fatherhood Foundation”, and kept his role for now. Williams blamed yesterday’s revelations on “extreme feminists”. Yikes. I’ve never been called that before, not even in my hilariously SNAG uni days. With all due respect to Mr Williams, you don’t have to be any sort of feminist to find those views about gays and lesbians deeply offensive. A functioning moral compass is all that suffices. Williams was deliberately selected because the Government wants to target men who are, in Roxon’s words, “disfranchised, disengaged”. There’s merit in that idea and a group like Lone Fathers offers a vehicle for accessing such men. We’re therefore into the difficult area of maximizing the effectiveness of a health policy versus condoning the extreme views of an organization composed of often embittered men angry at ex-partners and the Family Court. Part of Williams’s brief as head of his Association is to promote the view that men are as much victims of domestic violence as women. This is a persistent theme in his newsletters. All victims of domestic violence deserve support services, regardless of gender, and all perpetrators deserve appropriate handling via the criminal justice system. Anything that encourages male victims of domestic violence to be more open about their experiences is worthwhile and complements the aims of the men’s health ambassadors program. But Williams goes to extremes in his advocacy for male victims of domestic violence. In 2006, he was a co-signatory of a response to “the anti-male UN report on ‘Violence against women’”, which argued that reporting of domestic violence was biased against men, including several claims that women are greater perpetrators of domestic violence than men — such as “a recent international study of severe violence among dating couples, 55% was mutual violence, 16% was male only, and 29% of violence was female only.” Saliently, the response also claimed that domestic violence programs “have been shown to result in widespread violations of due process protections… weaken families, bias divorce proceedings, and deprive children of contact from their fathers.” That statement goes beyond advocating for male domestic violence victims. Way beyond. These views aren’t unrelated to men’s health, but they’re not quite in the same league as the drivel peddled by Marsh. Even so, no Government should be entirely comfortable with such people as a representative of a taxpayer-funded program. Not that Williams is entirely the cleanskin about gay and lesbian issues that his comments make him out to be. The Lone Fathers’ Association has given space to Marsh in its newsletters to promote his views on “gender disorientation pathology” and criticise attempts to end discrimination against same-s-x couples as “evil”. Williams himself has criticised same-sex couples as unable to provide appropriate “mental and moral development” for children and unequal to heteros-xual couples. This morning Roxon took responsibility for the appointment of Marsh and said that she wished more background checking had been done. Roxon has been badly let down by either her office or her bureaucrats or both. There are two ways Marsh would have been appointed – either on the recommendation of the Minister’s staff, or on the suggestion of the Department of Health and Ageing. But even in the former case, some background checking should’ve been done by bureaucrats in the relevant program area (presumably the Population Health Division). Perhaps it was and it was provided to Roxon’s office, who ignored it. Either way, it’s an unnecessary and sloppy lapse in judgement. Unnecessary and sloppy also applies to the appointment of Tim Mathieson. What sort of political tin ear does Roxon have to think this was okay? Mathieson will probably be perfectly serviceable in the role but his lack of qualifications of any kind is fairly glaring. Then again, worse appointments have been made before and will be made again by both sides. Dennis Jensen this morning put out a press release about it, loaded with hair puns. “I don’t want to split hairs on this but I’d urge you all to be asking her some curly questions.” For Jensen, it was impressively close to amusing. And that’s about what it deserves. |
|
|
42 Comments
How many lame-duck ministers and advisors are involved in this federal government health farce? Tim Mathieson loses his job as a hair colourant rep to suddenly appear on a couple of health-related panels with no meaningful or professional skilling other than being the deputy PM’s paramour. Either that or Shepparton Centrelink emailed Parliament House with some stunning credentials we know zilch about to fast-track his New Start. His vehicle carks it on the way to his first appearance as a mens health amabassador extraordinaire - does that mean he’ll lodge an application today for a government vehicle - so he can be on time for his next official appointment as a Kidney Health Australia emissary. Confidence in government is a myth.
Hang on …. isn’t he a women’s hairdresser?
Arty - this is about unintelligent leadership, no more…
I’d like to ask Barry Williams if it is okay for two gay people, one male, one female, to live together and raise their biological children as a couple. He seems to be suggesting that the important thing is the core family unit; one male, one female, coparenting their offspring. If that is the case, he should raise no objection to those two people both being gay. He SHOULD, but I’m sure he’d find some other reason why it’s not good for the kids. Again, hatred and intolerance at the core. Why doesn’t he just say he hates fags and leave it at that?
Far right anti feminist activists such as fathers4life often proclaim that women and men are equally abusive in domestic relationships.
This is a constant and deliberate misinterpretation of domestic abuse research data developed by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles.
Dr Richard Gelles, one of the researchers who created the Conflict Tactic Scales, a method of evaluating intrapersonal violence has criticized radical fathers’ and men’s rights groups for their misleading claims .Gelles, said that when we look at injuries resulting from violence involving male and female partners, it is categorically false to imply that there are the same number of “battered” men as there are battered women. Research shows that nearly 90 percent of battering victims are women and about ten percent are men.
No doubt there are men who are abused by women; No one said that women are never abusive.
What is galling about this repeated far right tripe is that far from promoting services for abused men it is used for silencing victims and undermining the services of the organisations helping domestic abuse victims.
They antagonise potential supporters. Attacking existing services for female survivors (they are all liars you know) and do male survivors of violence a great disservice. It is an attack on the very people who brought the issue of interpersonal violence to public attention in the first place and who have been leaders in this field. Successful helping models for men could be set up more effectively by working together and without people with grudges running interference.
The opinions they hold are very damaging.
Barry Williams is Vice President of the Shared Parenting Council who have a definite anti gay stance if you do some proper research. They are also anti women although they will tolerate and use the second wives of men to further their own cause. Their website is http://www.familylawwebguide.com.au
Some quotes from some key members of S.P.C.A.:
“A man wanting/having sex with another males is first and foremost a homosexual- and if the other male is a boy it also paedohilia. Once you break one of Gods commands-like no homosexuality- then the others follow, paedophilia, incest, bestiality, sex involving defecation and urination etc. All manner of perversions.”
“There can’t be a better illustration of the massive impact of the homosexual propaganda and the extent of the control it has over the media”
John James you are one bigoted sick S.O.B. Your religious hokus pokus ensures your comments are a joke, better suited to the Inquisition.
So what they are without help is very easy to disparage.
Please sign our petition to get this guy off the committee:
http://www.gopetition.com.au/online/23630.html
What defines hate speech? Is it speech which which people don’t agree? The only thing more dangerous than hate speech is those who want to silence speech. Careful for what you wish for people.
Oh, and John James…you simply couldn’t have been more wrong about the result of the US election….so whatever compass has been giving you directions this last six months or so doesn’t count for dogshit.
John James: Please read Justin’s comment about Marilyn, multiply by ten thousand, then square the result to arrive at other peoples’ opinion of you. You are so much of a joke that even the Catholic Church is jack of you. Your odious and idiotic views are tolerated by no one. Least of all the side which you claim to support.
Suddenly, I see the truth. You are not a member of the Roman Catholic faith are you? You’re working the other side of the fence. You are out to undo the Catholic Church. Well, why bother? They’re doing a fine job on their own.
‘A functioning moral compass is all that suffices”. Coming from apologists for abortion and sodomy that would have to rank with the ” I did not have sexual relations with that woman ” statement from that champion of unborn children and women’s rights, Bill ‘Slick Willy’ Clinton, who is about to be inducted into Bernard and the Left’s Hall of Fame, as the most amazing piece of fantasy. Poor Woof!
This will be interesting come the next election. Already in the UK ,Catholic adoption agencies have closed because they will not place children, often the same kids rescued from the abortionist’s knife, with sodomites. The Left is corrupt, but this is a new low.
Soon, they’ll be trying to rewrite Genesis.
I’ll be interested to see Kevin’s take on this.
Roxon’s policy-making on mens health via a skewed ambassadorial panel selected by dumbed down green horn personal and department advisory teams is the perfect recipe for an administrative failure. And when the entire cabinet beavers away with the same blunt instruments and governance mud maps who do we turn to next election? Revive the over-the-cliff lemmings or do a NSW and let it run itself. This glaring crack in Rudd’s government is possibly why he has a finger in every pie. Kev - it’s about de-politicising the public service and educating the party turks. You’re only as good as the hired help.
What a hysterical rant from these homophiles.
So people object to homosexuality, get over it. They have that right.
Since when was two men practicing the clearly evolutionary untenable ok ? Or do people delude themselves that American sitcoms and a few trendies are the font of all knowledge ?
Bernard Keane should get over himself. Those two blokes he has a hissy fit about are perfectly decent blokes who should be proud ( pun intended ) of their views. They have a sterling record of campaigning for childrends rights. Homosexuals are 1.5% of the population ( not 10% ) so if anyone who has straight values are the norm for mens health.
Marilyn… Do you truly believe in the positions you take? I’m going to assume you do as your everywhere and at least, constant. If you really are committed to the causes you seem to support, don’t you think it would be best if your actions HELPED those causes?… I can assure you, the way you conduct yourself around the blogosphere does the opposite. Your considered a joke by most, a flake by many and a whack-job by a few. Those of us that actually care about some of the things you go on about, are indeed, frustrated and quite frankly embarrassed and pissed off with your style. You want to help?, then you need to adjust your approach.
Your NOT helping, your hurting
Unless of course, you are, as a significant number of people believe, a deliberate ” caricature” for vested interest to use as an example to dismiss “bloggers” as a bunch of reactionary flakes
(you don’t believe the job is paid)
So what if Mathieson is only a bloke. At least Gillard didn’t give him her phone card and the job is not paid.
Why on earth do you have to get yourselves into such a tizzy about such bloody trivia.
Where were you when kids were being tortured in concentration camps?
What on earth is wrong with Mathieson, he is not married to anyone of note and has not hurt anyone like the right wing fundamentalist christian nutjob Williams. Yep I did some more checking and lo and behold there were the dodgy ministries and the Family first nutty pastor and his sidekick in the SA parliament disguised as real politicians.
I don’t know why Roxon wants a representative of the sole fathers mob though because they are usually sole fathers because they have deserted their own kids while sole mothers are forced to get a job when the kids turn 8 or get branded sluts, whores and losers.
John James - I think you’re confused. This is Crikey, not the Daily Telegraph. Stick to articles you understand - the ones with big pictures.
Or just have a good lie down.
Tim Mathieson’s appointment is jobs for the boys…
Reporting on men’s health from a hairdresser’s point of view… Give us a break
Our Australian men deserve better than this.
Nicola Roxon widen up your casting range to cover those blokes that don’t have a VERY close association with Julia Gillard
Why should Roxon take all the heat for this? Did Rudd and Jordan let this happen when they were sipping on Pisco Sours in Peru? Surely every ministerial appointment still goes to Cabinet and gets vetted by the PM’s minders before it does? That’s what used to happen. Same under Fraser, Hawke, Keating and Howard. Can’t imagine any recent change.
A number of the comments here have suggested Barry Williams isn’t an appropriate ambassador because he has expressed views that could be interpreted as anti-gay and anti-women. I also note that the idea that ambassadors should be people who could target those otherwise beyond the reach of normal campaigns has been caricatured along the lines of “why don’t they have a member of the KKK to reach racists.”
The article above was intended to try to tease out exactly the issue of how far making someone an unpaid ambassador amounts to an endorsement of their views, particularly when the Government is explicitly trying to reach out to the marginalised. Given the views about domestic violence programs that Williams has put his name to, and the link between that issue and men’s health, I’m inclined to the view that he is not an appropriate ambassador. But I haven’t seen anything more clearly anti-gay from Williams than his views on same-sex couples that I discussed. If he has made anti-gay comments then that would strengthen the case for his being an inappropriate ambassador, because, again, it goes directly to the issue of men’s health.
However the mere fact that the man might hold views on family issues unrelated to men’s health that I disagree with is not, in my view, a reason to dump him.
As for the notion that selecting someone like Williams is tantamount to picking a racist to appeal to bigots is nonsense. Adherents of any sort of bigotry cannot be a legitimate ambassador for something like men’s health because they’ll inevitably be prejudiced toward a subsection of men.
And for those trying to talk sense into Marilyn, foggedaboudit.
And other/s on this appointment have secrets yet to be exposed
This guy is obviously very unhealthy to the rest of the population. Barry Williams needs to be dismissed too. Threatening to sue is a common trait amongst his colleagues at the SPCA:
“Just in case you think we are doing nothing about the blogger, please remember that building a legal case takes time - we like to win!
Senior Executive Member SRL - Resources”
http://www.familylawwebguide.com.au/forum/index.php?page=topicview&id=3193&kfs104=0
There is a group of bloggers(http://thesharedparentingdisaster.blogspot.com/search/label/Family%20Law%20Web%20Guide
http://anonymums.blogspot.com/search/label/Shared%20Parenting%20Council%20Of%20Australia
http://exposethetruth08.blogspot.com/
), that I have come across that have been exposing how sexist and violence supportive the SPCA are(Barry williams is the vice president of http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_3OgwBkoGmAc/SSaBbe8p33I/AAAAAAAAAOI/L_lz5G40FII/s1600-h/SPCAfront.JPG).
Well, the boys in leather are out in force. I had to laugh at the cartoon in the Australian to-day with the customer in the barber shop telling Tim Mathieson he wanted a short back and sides and then asking, alarmingly, what he was doing with the rubber glove.
Dave, Abbo’s big enough to speak for himself but I’d be surprised if his commnets were based on the notion that homosexual practice should be regarded as acceptable and that is the point of contention in this debate.
I do not imagine a practising homosexual would be allowed to teach in any Catholic institution and my earlier posting ‘s reference to the closing of Catholic adoption agencies in the UK is further evidence of the abhorrence with which the Mystical Body of Christ views this abominable desacration of the human body.
Nick, defending sodomy! Mate, what next? Bestiality? What was that about dogshit?
I note that plebiscites in 3 states n the recent American election, all repudiating homosexual practice, were carried.
Try telling parents with kids that their children should be exposed to this drivel. That the Left champions this corruption is feeding radical Islam’s assaults on the West.
Barry Williams was on ABC702 this morning, saying he had engaged a barrister and was intent on suing The Australian for libel. Seems Crikey and Bernard have escaped.
In the name of psychology, psychology, psychology is everything JohnJames’ erection of the political reference to the famous Bill Clinton “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” statement needs to be understood in the terms of ‘men’s health’ and how inseparably joined to ‘women’s health’ it always will remain.
(there is a new and exciting psychological therapy ‘masturbate to get it’ available now)
The real elephant in the room is the dominance of men everywhere and in everything with all the male Dr’s, Professors, judges, lawyers, politicians, priests and god knows what else with the special exclusive rights over strength and power, the brain and human intelligence and (beauty) (and still the girls want to help) god (he’s a man) help them as they won’t help themselves. Where’s the hairdresser?
Bernard, since I more often than not respect your views, a writing tip - please don’t ever employ the word ‘fairly’ as in ‘fairly glaring’. ‘Glaring’ is absolutely fine and there’s no need for you, a journalist, to pussy foot.. ‘Fairly’ is more suited to correspondence with your mother…talking about the weather…possibly in the 1940s…in Britain…
Marilyn - on the other hand, I think Bernard terming nepotism, ‘nepotism’, is the only answer your super-bizarro and perplexingly indignant (I’ll refrain from writing ‘more than stupid’) rhetorical question was seeking? Unless all you wanted to contribute is, ‘course it was all right if they’re not married.’
FFS, is this la la crikey comments land we’re sauntering right into??
Come on guys lets lift the game a bit here.
John James, take note. Religious extremists have been causing enough trouble around the world lately, hush yourself now.
Roxon’s mad moment spoils an otherwise good year for appointments - this is the first major braiinburst.
Is masturbation a homosexual activity?
Dr Harvey Tarvydas#4: Masturbation is a perfectly healthy part of anyone’s sex life: it should be practiced regularly by the dear priests of the Catholic Church. Oh, perish the thought! It’s enjoyable; therefore it’s evil!!. Pity they don’t practice more of it, and stop molesting the peach-like bums of little boys. Ain’t that the truth John James?
Its ok people John James is in the process of gathering up his followers from a phone box and heading for the hills to await the the end of the world. Bye John John, see you when you get back.
I’m with Marylin
(and Bernard)
……. in Roxon’s words, “disfranchised, disengaged”. There’s merit in that idea and a group like Lone Fathers offers a vehicle for accessing such men …….
I heard him on the ABC also and as he himself would say
“there’s nufin out there to help us”
The subject is male health. All these comments seem to be about some other topics.
Kspadden is correct about these groups. giving these men power with their hate speech toward gay men and battered mothers will do nothing but cause a great divide within our community. I cannot see why Nicola, could have chosen representatives from real key minority groups such as our indigenous, gay rights advocates that also had at least some knowledge and experience in health. These groups are not hurting women or children. They are not promoting hate and spreading propaganda. These groups promote harmony and recognition.
John M, I heard a similar (if not identical) interview on Radio National. I understood he was threatening to sue the mob Warwick Marsh runs for claiming that Williams supported his organisation’s viewpoint. What could he possibly sue the media for? (Not that he sounded like the sharpest twig on the tree, exactly.)
Sheesh, can’t handle any truth can you Nick? Nearly 4,000 kids were incarcerated and tortured in those concentration camps - I have the evidence in my hot little hands.
Now grow up wanker. Mathieson being a spokesperson for men’s health with no pay is not a problem, it is wacky hysteria about nothing much.
JJ, still…interesting to watch you play a new game of bonkers by yourself on this board.
(I say that, yet I still have some respect for your views on abortion you’ve put forth occasionally in the past, but honestly, listen to yourself right now and the freaking nonsense you’re writing…)
“tizzy about such bloody trivia”
Wow Marliyn, maybe all taxpayers money should be considered ‘bloody’ trivia.
Breathlessly followed by your Godwin’s breach.
Sheesh and slush logic from you today unfortunately.
What’s wrong with Mathieson, Marilyn, is that he’s Julia Gillard’s partner with no especial expertise beyond his gender. ‘Nuff said.
Bernard K - keep up your very good work. We all need to be informed and enlightened about what our pollies are actually up to and I value your insights.
As for Roxon and Gillard, I’m so dismayed by their lack of political nous, unintelligent decisions, paucity of basic common sense, and appalling misjudgements.
I could weep.
The argument that you have to have bigoted homophobes on the panel to engaged bigoted homophobic men in the community is ridiculous. Do you need to employ the KKK to engage racists?
John James, I don’t know what Kevin Rudd will make of it all but I note that Tony Abbott is being quoted as saying that both Marsh and Williams should have gone. Glad that at least some Catholics are willing to be progressive about this issue. Or is Abbott a raving lefty too?
… and men’s health is the loser on the day. If the ambassadors are to be representatives of disengaged groups (appointed not elected) then who is on the team for bikies, RL footballers, homophobes, jail-birds, AA, junkies, etc? Will there be proper recognition of typical male health problems such as inability to enjoy sex without the indulgence of the rest of the team, inability to refuse a drink, practice of unusual sexual acts too hot for SBS, sharing a cell with a very large person? It it a requirement that they have suitable medical training so that they can answer questions after they have read the script. Why didn’t Cate get a guernsey?