Conroy’s change of tack: make us pure, but not yet
|
Stephen Conroy has moved to take the heat out of the internet filtering debate by delaying the introduction of the filter until the conclusion of a review of the Refused Classification category, expected to take at least twelve months. Conroy announced a package of measures this morning aimed at heading off persistent criticism of the filter proposal as the Government heads into the election:
However, the key announcement is that an eminent figure will be asked to conduct a review of the RC category to ensure it is in accordance with community standards. The filter will not, Conroy said, proceed until that review is completed, which is expected to be in 12 months. The review will be conducted under the auspices of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General, which next meets in Perth in two weeks on 22-23 July. Assuming the proposed review is an agenda item for that meeting and approved by Commonwealth and State Attorneys-General, it would not be completed by late 2011, as an inquiry head, a stakeholder reference group and community panels will need to be appointed and terms of reference developed. Conroy was joined at the announcement by representatives from Optus, Primus and Telstra, who announced their respective ISPs would be putting in place voluntary filters of child p-rnography material as identified by local and overseas law enforcement authorities. While the filter remains a flawed and deeply concerning proposal, Conroy’s announcement today is intended to take the heat out of the filter issue and that is what it is likely to do. Hardcore libertarians will continue to object to the proposal anyway, but much of the concern about the filter arises from concerns that the RC category is a poor fit for online filtering and is both too restrictive and a tool for politicians in the future to block other types of content they deem inappropriate for political purposes. The proposed review — a standard tactic under this Government — won’t allay some of these fears and could be used by reactionary groups like the Australian Christian Lobby to demand even greater censorship on the community. But it does put the onus on the opponents of the filter to articulate their key concerns beyond blanket opposition, and of course delays the introduction of the filter well beyond the election. It has been clear since March, when the first deadline for introduction of filter legislation passed with no word from the Government, that the filter was not going to be considered by Parliament before the election. Now however, it has been pushed well beyond the election and in fact, depending on how long the RC review takes, may not be up and running until the end of next year. Conroy’s announcements about the process of blacklisting sites does provide some reassurance about transparency. He will be criticised for continuing to insist that the blacklist remains confidential, but the process he outlined this morning, in which the Classification Board will handle complaints about sites, site owners will be told if they’re to be blacklisted, and internet users will clearly see that a site has been blacklisted, addresses many concerns about the process, particularly for businesses or individuals who might find, through no fault of their own, that they’ve been blacklisted. The proposed process is also something of a ministerial backhander to ACMA, which was humiliated in 2009 when it was revealed it bungled the current blacklist by adding innocuous sites of domestic businesses. ACMA can currently add sites to the blacklist of its own volition, based on a suspicion a site may contain RC material, and may retain this power under the net filter legislation (which remains unseen), but its primary source of blacklist material other than law enforcement authorities — public complaints — will all be handled by the Classification Board. This won’t silence opponents of mandatory filtering — and nor should it, because it remains a fundamentally flawed idea. Nevertheless, Conroy’s review of the RC category ends his point-blank refusal to engage on this issue — often accompanied by the basest abuse about the motives of his opponents — and offers a process that will at least enable critics to be heard by an independent party. Filter opponents should take up Conroy’s offer and start organising their input to the review. |
|
|
|
181 Comments
“But it does put the onus on the opponents of the filter to articulate their key concerns beyond blanket opposition”
Tosh. No articulation is required beyond saying non-transparent censorship is unacceptable in a free society. I can quite imagine Conroy doesn’t want to come out right before an election and tell us again that everyone who doesn’t want the government secretly blacklisting dentists and travel agents must be an enthusiastic child pornographer.
The real problem with Conroy’s ongoing proposal is that it provides an enabling facility for politicians to suppress access to information. Such subjects which spring to mind could include access to information on birth control, dying with dignity and other preoccupations of the lunatic religious right.
Notwithstanding ACMA’s bungling of banned sites, the real problem is that corrupt politicians in the future can use these filtering tools to suppress access to information which they find unpleasant or difficult to deal with.
One only has to look at the use of these tools in jurisdictions such as Iran, China, North Korea and Myanmar to see how oppressive these tools can be in the hands of disingenuous politicians. Of course no Australian politician would use such tools, they are all so honest and trustworthy!
Gosh. Really? Is there an election coming up?
Conroy is the epitome of the nanny state. The 2009 leak of the alleged ACMA blacklist caused him to immediately reach for the hot-button rejoinder, that the leak is “irresponsible and undermines efforts to improve cyber safety and create a safe online environment for children.”
What bollocks. It seems every reference to internet content filtering is contextualised as preventing the sexual exploitation of children. Indeed, in the debate it is implied that those who are against internet content censorship are somehow pedophiles or at least in some way morally suspect. It is parents’ responsibility to ensure the safety of their children. Removing this responsibility through government function is the thin edge of a very socially destructive wedge. Surely it is not the function of government to usurp a parent’s role.
The bitter irony is that far and away the huge majority of sexual abuse against children is perpetrated by a family member.
The plan still provides a vehicle for future governments to censor speech. That is not something that any free democracy should contemplate.
I predict that any review of the RC category will see plenty of rabid conservatives and anti-porn pundits happily demanding that even more things be banned. Hopefully there will also be loud voices arguing the opposite; that adults should be free to see, read and hear what they wish and that the government should not have the ability to prevent adults from making their own decisions with regards to films, books, TV and yes, the internet.
The idea that blacklisted sites will be able to appeal sounds nice enough, but you can bet it will be the same onerous and expensive process faced by other content producers like adult video distributors. They ban you, you appeal. You then have to pay excessive fees for the privilege, with no guarantee that your appeal will be successful. Nice little earner. How much will it cost to classify a website with thousands of pages? Most won’t bother. Censorship via exorbitant fees is just as effective as a ban.
Big Brother.
Have all Labor politicians caught the jelly fish disease?
Looks like yet another contentious government policy has been quietly shifted to the back burner to clear the way for The Main Event.
Zut Alors and Sancho, I agree.
I rarely email by Fed MP about anything, but he did hear from me about this.
So many questions remain - who will be conducting the ‘non -government’ review of the list? Why is the banned list not to be made public?
Does this mean that those of us opposed to the filter will no longer be labelled as child pornographers?
If we don’t succeed in having the filter banned, the least we can do is hold Conroy to this list of measures.
Its not over yet!
Steve Conroy should be shifted to another portfolio. One which cannot be interfered with by his moralistic religionism.
The right of free speech is being slowly denied to the citizens of Oz. With the imposition of an internet filter, the government of whatever persuasion, can blacklist anyone or any business it deems to be critical of their actions.
Thus do we enter the world of 1984 and Animal Farm. And thus does Australia back back to the Middle Ages, where the Moral Minority dictates to the Silent Majority what to think, say and feel, what they can look at and how they will think of, and VOTE for the government.
That Senator Conroy would deny Australians an unfiltered internet is iniquitous.
That he does so to ‘Protect Our Kiddie Widdies’ is the basest form of mendacity and manipulation ever perpetrated by an Australian government.
Prime Minister Gillard should act swiftly to remove Steve Conroy.
Senator Conroy should understand, also, that his own presence in government is proof positive that there is no god.
Another in the species of backflippus policios
I agree with BK that Conroy’s new position is a partial win for free speech which should be supported by free speech advocates contributing to the review.
While I personally support completely free speech in all media, it isn’t realistic to advocate this as the only position over the next 5 years. A completely free internet hasn’t been realistic since it became as popular as books and newspapers, which have always been censored by the Australian Government.
Bitch all you want about Labor and Conroy on the internet filter but ask yourself “why hasn’t the Coalition and Abbott come out against it?” Lets face it. If Abbott became PM he would be a kid in a candy store with an internet filter. Imagine all the things he could block like abortion information sites. A web site showing anything more than a woman’s ankle would be blocked faster than you could say “Hail Mary”.
So before you start sprouting your hyperbolic indignation claiming you’ll vote Lib over this issue think about who, and what, you’re voting for.
The Greens will most likely get balance of power in the Senate after July 2011. Even if the ALP wins the next election they will most likely be unable to introduce the legislation for it before July 2011 which is when the senate changes over (and goodbye Senator Fielding) and the Greens have already stated they are opposed to the filter. So that leaves Labor need Coalition support. And that will be interesting.
From the report, I read that:
a) not everything that is RC will be blacklisted, and
b) sites that are blacklisted do not need to be RC.
Therefore, all the open stuff he tells us about the Refused Classification category is totally irrelevant to the blacklist, which will remain fully secret.
RC is appealable, but blacklisting is apparently not.
The RC process will be reviewed by an Eminent Person - but not the blacklist.
Bah, Peas and shells.
Clear the decks! Clear the decks! And once more with feeling: Clear the decks!
I’ve consistently blogged over the past year (mainly on tech blogs like ITnews and ZDnet) that Conroy would not back down of his own accord, but that the PM (then Rudd) would force him before the election to introduce in impartial review procedure AND that it would remain at ISP-level (not consumer PC end) but have an ‘OPT-OUT’ provision. So all the “working families” with kids can elect to have the filter protection, while all journalists (and many other categories of adults) can instruct their ISP that they desire a non-filtered internet source. Only the opt-out provision truly protects the right to have a political discussion of ‘illegal’ acts like euthenasia.
Graeme Harrison (prof at-symbol post.harvard.edu)
EVERYONE BRACE YOURSELVES: The other thing which, if possible, is even worse than an internet filter. And about which there has been little information in the media…..
The Police, (that’s right, that is what I said), will have the right to access our internet ‘history’.
Meaning that our every thought, whether followed up or not, will be available to the Goon Squad. So if you, ZUT, tell the Dogonauts an address to look at, and you inadvertently give us a wrong address, worse, an address which turns out to be part of a paedophilia ring, the Gestapo will have the right to arrest us.
God! I love the freedom we Australians do not have.
GAVAN MOODIE: Why should we, the majority of Australians, have to suffer these impositions because some parents are too lazy to create their own filters?
Why should we be deemed to be more fragile than the Americans? Why should an Australian government imagine we are all paedophiles, and treat us accordingly?
On top of an internet filter we will have the right the Police are looking for, to allow them access our internet history?
Sure, they will do this to prevent us from criminals. Why then, are the public treated as they would be criminals?
Oh, it’s all being done to protect us!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yeah?
This is actually somewhat sneaky.
Here we have an open review that goes for twelve months with a wide range of community submissions on what should be blocked (online and off). The key here is that the review is simply on what content should be blocked, any argument on if blocking is suitable for all mediums or suitable at all will be outside the terms of reference and ignored.
At the end of the process Conroy will be able to start up and say he’s done his consultation on implementing the filter when in practice he’s done nothing of the sort.
It’s a “when did you stop beating your wife?” review.
MODERATOR, Once again I am being moderated on my name only.
I have used no swear words.
I have not abused anyone.
Except for Senator Fielding, and he doesn’t count.
Graeme,
Surely the only way that Conroy could have at first tried to ban all x-rated content from the net, and then RC content, was with Rudds FULL approval. This was Rudd’s filter, and Conroy was just the one doing the talking.
Clearly this also had the ‘kitchen cabinet’ approval too, as Julia is now taking a MANDATORY filter to the electorate.
Now that it looks certain that Labor intend to implement a mandatory filter, the main worry is what will be included as Refused Classification. Note that adding things to the list of what must be RC is not something that needs to go to parliament.
Labor may yet ban all x-rated content from the net, not by banning x-content, but by saying that RC will now include any depiction of aroused genitalia.
Of course content other than s-x may also be included within RC without needing the approval of parliament. This is a very big worry.
This announcement is not putting the filter to bed. It is taking it to the electorate. And if Labor are re-elected they will claim that they now have a mandate to implement the filter.
And I fear that the inquiry into what should be RC will lean towards the vocal conservative minority. We may yet see Henson’s PG rated photos moved to RC. And who knows what else may soon be banned.
Paedophile
Perhaps this is the word which acts as a trigger?
B I N G O!
MWH: You are a member of the Greens, I think.
Your own Clive Hamilton is in favour of an internet filter. Which is one of the reasons he failed to get into Parliament.
GAVAN MOODIE: Why should we, the majority of Australians, have to suffer these impositions because some parents are too lazy to create their own filters?
Why should we be deemed to be more fragile than the Americans? Why should an Australian government imagine we are all child abusers, and treat us accordingly?
On top of an internet filter the Police will have the right to access our own individual internet history? This bill is close to being introduced.
Why oh why do people not complain about it?
Presumably we will be clapped in irons if we look at a p==o=r=n site?
Sure, they will do this to prevent us from criminals. Why then, are the public treated as they would be criminals?
Oh, it’s all being done to protect us!!!!!!!!!!
Oh yeah?
Venise,
I seriously doubt that if the Greens had put up another candidate in Higgins that they would have won the seat. Climate change was a much bigger issue at the time (and it is an indictment of the voters of Higgins that in the closest we may ever get to a referendum on climate change that they voted for inaction).
I acknowledge that Clive is a supporter of the filter (and speaking to him I found that he was unwilling to listen to the reasons why the filter would not work).
Thus I voted 1 Sex Party, 2 Greens in Higgins.
But don’t confuse Clive’s views to those of The Greens. The Greens chose Clive as the Higgins candidate as he was an excellent candidate in the area of climate change. I know that the filter issue was briefly raised before his selection, and I know that the decision was that The Greens and Clive would agree to disagree on this issue.
The Greens have always been against the filter, and that is how they will vote if this issue is put to the Senate.
I repeat, I oppose all censorship of all meeja.
But since all media other than the internet are currently censored and are most likely to continue to be censored for the foreseeable future, I suggest that it is unrealistic to hope that the internet may continue uncensored. Thus, we all are currently prevented from seeing some films even tho it is relatively easy to exclude the vulnerable from cinemas.
The more realistic approach is therefore to seek the mildest and most open censorship of the internet at least no worse than the government’s censorship of other media, and advocate the relaxation of censorship of all media in the mean time.
Can someone advise me on a question relating to the filter ? If the filter is, as claimed, proficient in blocking blacklisted sites why then should those sites be kept secret ? If it blocks the sites then it doesn,t matter if the address is public and in any case an address doesn,t always reveal the nature of the site.
I,m ok with a filter used by parents or schools but not a mandatory filter applying to the general public. while people will be able to get around the filter politicians will also be able to get around any so called safeguards to block material they dont want us to access.
MWH: I’m delighted to hear it!
Another reason for not winning Higgins is that it is a blue ribbon Liberal seat. And as a result that awful woman with a cast iron jaw, Kelly O’Dwyer, an acolyte of Peter Costello, won the seat.
I voted exactly the same as you.
It will be interesting to see the Greens’ candidate ditto the Labour candidate at the next election.
They may as well re-field Clive Hamilton because it is a un-win-able seat for any candidate who is not a Liberal.
The more money a person has, the sillier they become-I’m talking about the electorate.
@VENISE - I agree with you about this proposal. What a load of old ???? For those who didn’t read it last time, I asked my eldest son about this proposal, and both he and his wife don’t believe it to be necessary. They receive a print out each week on all the sites their kids have visited on their own PC - they could have this facility on a daily basis if they wished - they believe that this is all that’s necessary and the rest is BS! If PC’s are in a public part of the house, and parents take responsibility for their own children’s welfare, Idon’t see the relevance of this proposal!
I have no desire to access any sites for violence or anything else mentioned today, but I do demand the right to access info on euthanasia or abortion or ??? I agree with those who think it will give politicians too much power over us - as though they don’t have enough already!
In 7 years, I haven’t ‘accidently’ or otherwise come across anything that I’ve found offensive, which I certainly would if I came across child pornography? But this isn’t the answer! I also understand, that pedophiles share their revolting images via email, not on an ‘open’ web site! And, if there is such a site, the govt should employ more federal police to track these mongrels down, not treat all of us as though we’re even remotely interested in this stuff - I certainly am not, and I’m sure all who contribute here are the same! I resent being treated as though I’m a potential danger to kids!
At no stage should the Govt (or collective govts) be allowed to leave in place a mechanism that can be easily adapted to allow filtering of anyone who disagrees with the prevailing govt policy or their policy shills. That is what I am most worried about. We are getting close to a situation now where anyone demonstrating against certain policies is being labelled a terrorist. Now if those same people run a website espousing counterculture views, they could esily be charged with running a terrorist website or worst an insurgency. No thanks! Too close for comfort. Throw the scoundrels out before they take away what little liberty is left! I hope you are all ready for your full body scans coming to an airport near you next year. Humbug!
By the way Vernise, feedback I am getting indicates that they are already wordcasting your emails and track your visitations with support from ISP’s ( I dont know whether this is willing or unwilling).
What you are alluding to would merely be formalised by the new rules. They are even launching software for the business sector which has its pedigree in intelligence so that corporations can profile you without your permission by analysing key words and site visitation patterns. They dont attach names to the data but they are providing diagnostics based on what is tantamount to spying as far as I can determine.
I am not worried about this filter (even though it is the worst policy ever conceived in this century) because the Internet treats censorship as damage and routes around it. That is the real beauty of a global, decentralised communications platform. The internet is not just a technological revolution; it is also a cultural and political revolution.
I compare the invention of the Internet to that of the printing press; great change is inevitable folks, and this scares the absolute shit out of the establishment.
Websites like Wikileaks challenge the establishment and push the status quo, this scares moral authoritarians like Senator Conroy, who refuse to accept the Harm Principle. History will record his kind perishing at one point or another.
Conroy is so arrogant he doesn’t even realise that even if hypothetically he had popular support for this filter (e.g. 95% of the public), it could never ever work as he intends it to.
It would be the equivalent of the government opening every single letter and parcel for inspection, then repackaging before it’s rerouted to the intended recipient. In other words, you’d need billions of public servants to even have a realistic chance of forcing it to work.
Face facts Conroy, if the likes of China fail to censor the Internet, what chance have you got?
In the past 12 months, Queensland has passed legislation to allow police (the standard, regular, state coppers) to (in the American parlance) ‘tap’ your phone. No longer do they have to see a judge, get an order and all that stuff. This is the same state police force that currently waits years and years (and are still arguing about it) to initiate minor internal disciplinary actions against investigating officers for public displays of crappy methods in the Palm Island matter. The Commissioner, the Premier and the Police Union are in an appalling stalemate. Some state and federal government departments (defense, AFP, intelligence etc) are set up to be directly controlled exclusively by the government - without consultation. Once the arrangement is set up there’s no further information available. We all know this. All of us. We can’t deny that governments do some things without consultation.
The internet filter sounds like the construction of a big, dark-windowed toll house on the multi-lane highway out of Town - traffic lights, cameras, slots in the windows, uniformed staff - but not using it for anything, yet, except routine pursuit of obvious targets. The intrigue is in the possible uses of that ‘toll house’ when the state might want to pull and pool all its resources to pursue a particular issue. If the toll house is in place it just has to be switched on and the program selected. The filter can be made to look at absolutely anything and everything - at the whim of whoever is behind the dark mirror windows. If we get a filter, we’re getting a toll house - a dark windowed orifice with possibly no living being inside it - just a plasma TV connected to the filter, a hammock, a badge and a gun.
When can we have a human being for an Attorney General?
RICHARD WILSON: Thanks for the information. You have really unmade my day.
FIREFLYING: It’s a neat theory, but isn’t getting around it very complicated?
“Change is inevitable” I query that. All that is required is for a government to be up to scratch with the rest of the population.
I am one hundred percent sure that no member of the government, or the civil service, will have the indignity of being filtered. They will have their own access to everything that is blacklisted and circumscribed. I’ll give you odds of 1-100 on, on that.
I can see Stevie baby salivating as he watches material which you and I can’t even see the name of. And doing that with the excuse he is protecting the nation. Which is bullshit.
“It would be the equivalent of the government opening every single letter and parcel for inspection, then repackaging before it’s rerouted to the intended recipient. In other words, you’d need billions of public servants to even have a realistic chance of forcing it to work.”
Exactly. It will give the government the great chance to employ the unemployable.
At our expense.
I hope you are right, that China has failed. But Australian governments are always ten years behind the rest of the world.
If they were really smart they would impose a tax on people using a banned site.
Governments may change, but not the bureaucracy.
No religious bigot should be in a position of power. Julia Gillard please note.
“FIREFLYING: It’s a neat theory, but isn’t getting around it very complicated?”
No sir. The filter is easily bypassed by anyone with the ability to Google and read. The simplest measure are anonymous proxies hosted overseas.
Aside from the fact that there are numerous ways to get around a web filter, it doesn’t even filter much of the Internet traffic; the majority of which is NOT through the web, but through P2p, bittorent, e-mails, encrypted connections, private servers etc etc.
“I can see Stevie baby salivating as he watches material which you and I can’t even see the name of.”
You perhaps, but not I.
“Exactly. It will give the government the great chance to employ the unemployable.
At our expense.”
Well that’s not quite the point I was aiming at. I equivocated the task as being impossible. If every letter and parcel were inspected, our postal system would collapse.
The analogy serves to highlight the MANY-to-MANY relationship between participants of the Internet and the postal service. Senator Conroy mistakenly thinks the Internet is like Radio or Television, which have a ONE-to-MANY relationship with its users, thus enabling easy and effective regulation of TV & Radio. Radio & Television are centralised communications platforms, by contrast the Internet and Postal services are decentralised.
Decentralisation is to my mind, the best tool humans have against Tyranny.
China has succeeded in keeping many of its computer illiterate citizens in the dark, notwithstanding all it takes is a determined individual to get around the Great Firewall of China. It is dangerous, but doable.
As for your tax idea well… I just don’t know how one could go about enforcing it. It would be like slapping a tax on letters containing ‘inappropriate material’. Aside from that, who arbitrarily determines what’s a “banned site” ? Such a list is surely an enabling tool for future regimes.
HUGH (CHARLIE) MCCOLL: I agree with what you say, but Attorney General? Please see below
LIZ: Precisely. They (the government, and the Opposition-can you imagine good old Jesuit- trained catholic Tony Abbott-NOT doing the same thing? I can’t) They solicit our votes, they spend our money, they live in a luxury that I could only dream about; they tell us what to think and do. It is nauseating.
HUGH: Senator Steve Conroy is the Minister for Broadband, Communications and a Digital Economy, Leader of the Government in the Senate.
Catholic who, in a conscience vote, voted against the abortion drug RU486. And voted to overturn the euthanasia legislation of the Northern Territory.
And this man has been placed in this position of sensitivity? The man is just another Torquemada, but living in the twenty-first century.
This is what happens when people of religion enter Parliament. Ditto Steve Fielding, who believes in little green men, who went around the world to get information about Climate Change. When he returned he was interviewed by a shock jock, and came out with this cringe-making comment. “There is no such thing as Climate Change, because God didn’t invent it??????????????
I rest my case.
With due respect Venise, I consider Atheism to be a religion (unorganised religion, to be precise) and as such I’d argue there is always going to be “people of religion” who enter Parliament.
Venise.
Did Fielding really say this?
“There is no such thing as Climate Change, because God didn’t invent it??????????????’
Surley you jest.
Venise
“There is no such thing as Climate Change, because God didn’t invent it.”
Well, now you’ve ruined my entire weekend. We have been led to believe God created everything. Is Senator Fielding saying He didn’t?
When will people learn that this is what comes of letting the Federal government take over everything.
Federal income tax leads to federal grants for states. Leads to strings attached to those grants. Leads to state governments decaying into an institutional sort of welfare dependency. Leads to federal takeovers of roads, hospitals, education, housing, industrial relations … and telecommunications, so soon after deregulating it.
Leads, in a perfectly natural progression, to a federal filter on your internet. And watch this space for further developments of the nanny state.
And why not? They’re giving us the NBN, aren’t they? Who are we to complain if they want a little bit more control of its content.
The founding fathers who wrote our Constitution tried to protect us from this. Most of the governing was to be done by the states. Citizens were guaranteed free movement across state borders. So one government imposes a nanny state, another a libertarian state, and another somewhere in between. You don’t like it, you have the option of voting with your feet. Inconvenient maybe, but better than no choice at all.
Citizens with choices are free citizens. Citizens with only one choice are not. Citizens who think the vote will save them … all you have to do is make 7 million others agree with you. And good luck with that.
This is a temporary reprieve for sure.
When have politicians and bureaucrats ever NOT grasped power whenever possible?
More control justifies their own salaries and gives them a chance to dole out more salaried positions to their mates. Just see the fun!
The Founding Fathers (USA), Jefferson & Co. all believed democracy to have an expiry date, very wise men I think they were. History goes in and out of crises, with the immediate proceeding generation more risk-averse but as time goes on and those memories are forgotten… people lose sight of what’s important: Liberty.
PINS, what the founding fathers apparently did not foresee, was the Great Depression, Two World Wars and numerous other 20th century events/upheavals that allowed the Commonwealth to backdoor the constitution and trick the States into conceding more and more powers over time.
International treaties are also another despicable method by which the Feds bypass the constitution. Especially since there is no overhead authority to provide accountability/dissent when it comes to International Law and treaties (note: the UN is a joke in regards to accountability).
I like your idea of decentralised government, sounds very much like what is proposed by the LDP. I especially like your point about Ochlocracy in your closing sentence. I’m amazed by electoral standards these days; it’s as if people don’t really care about demagoguery and statism?
Why on earth would supposedly educated men and women work so hard to implement something that simply won’t do what they claim it will?
Lobbying
Xtian fundamentalists
Scaremongering
Control
I’ve always voted Labor.
Not this time.
Fireflying - Do you know how it can be reversed? Income taxation. Control of the budget is, ultimately, control of everything. Control the whole country’s income tax and the rest falls like dominoes. Restore income tax to the states — possibly against their will, in the case of the southeastern states — and the 1901 vision of competitive federalism will gradually be reborn.
It didn’t arise from any conspiracy, this Commonwealth hegemony. There were several attempts to convince the states to take back responsibility for taxation following World War II. They didn’t want it, got used to the Commonwealth grants. Learned to show up at COAG on their knees with their hands out, trying to outdo each other in displays of broken-down “Woe is me” to get more funding. It became in some ways an incentive for state governments to neglect their responsibilities.
Restore income tax to the states, and with it comes necessity and self-reliance. And of course, some degree of choice for citizens as to which tax regime they live under.
I am fed up with people telling me atheism is a religion,anybody saying this is just trying to posit this to suit themselves.I am an atheist,the only time I think of a god(mostly) is when I’m on the web and somebody is thrashing around about it.You followers need to realise you are on your own.The older I get the more sure I am.
PS,god bless friday nights and wine.
…..not that there’s anything wrong with it.
Putting the implementation of an Internet filter off until after the election year does not take the heat out of the issue. It merely ingrains the feeling that Labor is tricky, and pandering to religious luddites.
The vast majority of Australians have integrated computers and the Internet into their daily lives now, and like it the way it is - uncensored. The under 30 demographic who got Rudd elected in 2007 projected their hope that Labor would offer a sensible alternative to the socially conservative policies of the Coalition.
The Liberals should ditch Abbott, re-install Malcolm, and ambush Labor from the left on civil liberties. They would capture a large swathe of younger voters.
Venise, the Attorney General is the chief law officer. Secrecy, censorship, cloak and dagger, in whatever department or form it is being practised, is ultimately conducted within the limits of various pieces of legislation overseen by the chief law officer. Whether it’s Defense, Communications, ASIO, ONA etc etc, the buck stops at the Attorney General’s door and I’d like to think there was a real human rather than a robot behind that door.
Atheism is not a religion, which is a belief in and worship of a god or gods or a general set of beliefs explaining the existence of and giving meaning to the universe. One form of atheism believes in nothing - it accepts the existence only of things that can be established empirically.
Atheism isn’t even a religion in the metaphorical sense of a group of people proselytising for a shared understanding of the world, for while some atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism, rationalism and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere, as Wikipedia points out. The only stance that atheists share is scepticism.
Such strength of feeling!!!
If — -IF the censorship move by Government was to control our net behaviour (I concede I’m ambivalent about this, but accept-more than ever now!*,- that Governments routinely abuse their power) ,- then this is a good and election/predictable move!
Whenever there is a mass protest/election-there is a fair chance of a ’ listening to the public’ delay. Bless.
*How I wish you folks could look beyond your own freedoms, and look to those of others on minimal incomes….Government incomes.
At the end of June, this ‘Government’ passed the Income Management Bill for all welfare recipients (with minimal exceptions). This programme has been in operation for indigenous peoples in the NT for quite some time. It has done little except to further apartheid-and encourage profiteering by food suppliers (I’m taking it as read, that most all of you know what IM. is).
I knew of the NT programme. It disgusted me, but I said nothing much about it. Shame on me. That’s the problem isn’t it?
Pastor Niemoeller was right.
Government Income recipients ( late 2011), are to have half? their income given to them in voucher form,-to exchange for fruit and vegetables-their rent is to be auto deducted.
IF you see this as a good move, then you must by association see ALL ‘welfare’ recipients as cheaters/bludgers, ………..who must have their behaviour controlled (sound familiar?).
IF you are raging against net censorship, but support this- Crikey allows a considerable leeway here:-
then you are a pack of selfish bloody bastards!!
“It is not a problem if it is not a problem for me”.
Now I wait for a self-centred cretin to come in and tell me there is a difference between the two things.
There bloody well is NOT!
……………….sigh;-I do not; DO NOT endorse child abuse-neglect/’dole bludging’.
You do not solve it by doing this to a large percentage of your populace who are largely in this position because of your own (Government/s) policies.
This is NOT off-topic. The two things are identical.
Well?
Elan, you ask the question: “Well?” As in: If you are raging against net censorship, but support ‘income management’ for all welfare recipients then you are a pack of selfish bloody bastards….. well?
Well, Elan, I don’t so I’m not and I don’t need your advice, let alone self promotion on the subject of self-centred cretinism thank you. Calm down, switch off the bold type and ponder the meaning of ‘identical’ = (of different things) agreeing in every detail.
Ah, yes. Angry, raving, bold-faced, bullying, loud-mouthed raw nerves. That’s just so what we need right now. Not.
@BINAH KETER CHOKMAH
!!! are you proselyzing? There is no such thing as a Trinity, only a Compound Unity=1….you need the Dove’s Eye ..man.
@FORENSIC
****!!! are you proselyzing?****
Hell no, but Gavin Moodie is…LoL!!!
@GAVIN MOODIE
No shortage of scepticism is a very healthy thing.
http://www.near-death.com/experiences/atheists01.html
@ELAN
I am with you Elan.
When they introduced IM into the NT, I was gob-smacked that a govt could derail civil liberties and inflict total humiliation on it’s people without the least bit of serious opposition or resistance from the rest of us Australians.
I always suspected it was a trial-run for the main event to eventually include anyone and everyone on income assistance…but it’s all just another spoke in the great wheel of restrictions on freedom, you know…full body scans at the airport, internet filter, Income Management for those on incomes assistance etc etc…
But on that point there are so many people with so much in common and from different walks of life who could combine and bury all differences to combat this creeping flesh…if we can bury those indifferences and unite then we can stop it in it’s tracks but if we don’t then we get what we deserve.
Thank-you LCC.
I recall when we were marching against the Iraq invasion (no pending election then), that there were thousands of us. There was an incident with a small group of Afghan Hazara’s and their supporters,-who were trying to draw attention to the fallout of conflicts, and asking people to attend a public forum four days after the march (which I did).
We were marching against aggression,-yet this group were told by some-cretins-to get out of the march-‘it was not about their plight’..
Four days later a metaphorical handful of people turned up to listen to tales of genocide against the Hazara.
Iraq=US.
Hazara’s=THEM.
It was that simple. Not a problem for me; not a problem.
Absolutely agree LCC: your final para is spot on!
_______________________
Muckrawl: Now do you get it?
A poster did not take offence, because they understood what I was saying.
I’ll take my outrage over this vile move;-the lack of interest in it by those who do not see it as affecting them………..over your crass stupidity any day.
@ELAN - I agree with you about Income Management also. I find it obscene and a return to the bad old days of patronising and patriarchal attitudes to indigenous people. The attitude that ‘they need us to handle their money, because …’? What rubbish! All it’s really helping are the major supermarkets, as they’re the only places the recipients can buy their groceries. A small number welcome it as it helps them budget, but having ‘financial planners etc’ to do that would have a better impact, and not remove peoples’ dignity and autonomy. Some indigenous people have to pool about $100 or more to catch a taxi to their closest ‘store’ that is hundreds of kilometres away! How sensible is that?
I’ve been to some rallies etc that support the people in the NT, and I think it’s this weekend, when a 4 day rally is being held at Alive Springs - hundreds of Uni students etc have bused it! If I had the money and my body could handle a bus trip? I’d have gone too. The people are going to fight back, and I’m on their side. The invasion into the NT in ‘07 was based on lies? (fancy that?) Less than a handful of people have either been questioned or charged; the restrictions re alcohol etc have not worked, in fact the opposite is true; there are no mechanisms for people with alcohol problems to get medical help and support. Only a handful or less of houses have been renovated or built, and school attendance has not changed - there has to be a bloody school in order to send your kids, and kids with serious ear infections, some with permanent damage can’t hear - no wonder they don’t want to travel/go to school!
I understand that 85% of aboriginal people don’t drink alcohol, unlike the rest of the population? 85% of them drink, and only 15% abstain - the opposite to indigenous people! It just looks more when the sensationalist media show the same footage over and over. I get angry every time the media shows the NT/Intervention issue - the same 3 or 4 ‘bits’ of video are shown each time. They don’t show us the area where, in order to save money, contents of a septic tank were allowed to pour out on the road - just a couple of blocks from a school? Imagine if such an ‘accident’ happened in my street? There’d be trucks with disinfectant pouring gunk around, kids and the elderly would be removed, the site would be cleaned, and workers on overtime to fix the problem etc? In the NT what happened? Jenny Macklin wouldn’t even respond, let alone send someone to investigate. This happened twice, in two different areas! One group had enough, and walked off! They’re now setting up their own area without govt assistance! A few of the major Unions are assisting them! One house has already been built!
Guess where I get most of my information about this situation from? The internet, either via articles, documentaries etc or emails from friends, Crikey, the Indigenous Times or other non msm outlets! Not good PR for this govt? No wonder they want to censor what we watch or read or???Also, prior to the Intervention there were approximately 180 applications for mining etc - this number has since jumped to over 430? Remove the Racial Discrimination Act, and utilise the Amendments Howard put in to the Native Title Act, and bingo! it’s open slather for at least 5 yrs!
GAVAN MOODIE: I clicked on to your post and got a screed about Atheism. What gives?
LIZ: Exactly! To tell the electorate, piously, what information they can access is tyranny. To impose the mentality of a seven year old child onto the electorate is repulsive.
Why would Steve Conroy, who must know how TV audiences are declining-due, in part to the makers of commercials who dictate to television stations that programs are not to exceed the capacity and IQ of a seven year old child-extend to the internet the same rules as applied to TV.
No wonder a recent survey of the working class revealed an illiteracy rate, and a numeracy rate, of forty percent of the workers. How can these people learn to think when idiot food is the only information they take on board. I know that if I was in the same position as them, I too would be illiterate, and this worries me.
Ironically, one of the religious right wing fundamentalist cults is up in arms against the internet. It turns out that the obscene photos they send out against the pro-abortion lobby-shots of mutilated foetuses, have upset Steve Conroy. He is blacklisting them. Ha Ha.
I : Yep, I heard the interview of the car radio, and when Seve Fielding uttered that deathless statement I bloody near drove into the back of a truck.
ZUT: Sorry to have ruined your weekend. But I did hear it on the Radio.
JOHN: I hope the thought of the Jesuit trained, bigoted, women-hating, anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia, women’s place is at the ironing board, Catholic fundamentalist Tony Abbott would arouse your ire as deeply as Steve Conroy of the Labor Party does.
DAVIROB: I agree totally. I was born into an atheist family, but I did go to an Anglican girls’ school.
Every morning we had to go to ‘Assembly’. This involved some prayers, and some God fawning. I remember, aged nine, listening to a fatuous old fart invoking God’s forgiveness for our sins. And as the suns’ rays slanted through the stained glass windows, and with bowed head, listening to this garbage. The proverbial ‘light’ went on in my head. “WTF am I doing here asking God to forgive my sins, when I know bloody well I hadn’t committed any?”
And, this was all the re-enforcement I needed to add to my jaundiced opinion
about religion. Liberty is a dangerously wonderful thing. It allows reason and logic, in the face of fairy tales and fear.
To the people who come out with the mind-bendingly stupid remark that Atheism is another form of religion, I have but one word for this tripe. Bullshit!
Thanks LIZ45.
This plan and its nationwide rollout was first raised (that I’m aware of) by Eva Cox here on Crikey, earlier this year.
It has been raised twice recently by two writers (article writers, not posters) on OnlineOpinion. It has been condemned by most all posters who responded to the articles.
90 welfare groups submitted opinions on this plan to the Labor !! Government;-88 groups objected to it….88!!
Nick Xenophon’s office, (whom I had approached in February about this), verbally stonewalled me about a response. (I got the ‘we will respond in due course’ crap). No response. He voted to bring it in! This SA ‘Independent’ Senator was elected at State level,-and then Federal on the premise of caring for the underdog. He pushes the independent line constantly,-as with the caring for those who are powerless…
I will be attending a public forum where he is Speaker, later this month. I know Nick well at the State level-I’ve worked with him.
I look forward to that forum.
Wasn’t disrespect, I define religion as: ‘a set of beliefs concerning the origin, nature and purpose of the universe and our existence within it’. Notice the lack of any mention of deities. Gavin has defined religion as involving the worship of a deity(s), I do not hold to that.
Furthermore he discounts Atheism because everyone has a unique, distinct point of view, in his words “there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere”, but such a statement can equally be applied to Deism, which is most definitely a religion. I feel my point still stands.
Disagree if you wish, but it certainly is no agenda on my part, and I ain’t a follower of theistic religion so I don’t think I have a vested interest on the point.
So, I take it that those who are (here) completely obsessed with Labor’s ‘income-management-for-welfare-recipients’ scheme AND with Labor’s internet filtering will now put Labor last on the ballot paper - regardless of whatever inanities Tony Abbott and the Coalition dream up or add to their already sagging list between now and the election? That’s a big call for traditional Labor voters. I’ve met a few and whilst they’ve told me they’ve gone two-timing with the Greens now and again I’ve never met one who would admit they put Liberal ahead of Labor - even at the bottom of the ballot paper. Just how strongly are these positions held?
HUGH (CHARLIE) MCCOLL: Sorry, I missed your last comment up until now. Yeah, now I understand what you are on about.
As a matter of interest, who is the Attorney General? I’ll have to Google it. I’m not normally this slack.
@Last Chance Cafe
>>>>>”I was gob-smacked that a govt could derail civil liberties and inflict total humiliation on it’s people without the least bit of serious opposition or resistance from the rest of us Australians.”
I agree. Me too.
There are plenty more cases I find gob-smacking as well, but usually I find myself in a minority of one when I mention it, surrounded by people with the glazed indifferent smiles of well-conditioned inhabitants of Brave New World.
How about the Port Arthur massacre, the most violent ‘terror incident’ ever on Australian soil, occasioning no coronial inquiry, inquest or public inquiry (at the trial, the prisoner, who’d been isolated for several months, changed his plea to guilty - so the prosecution/mass media case has NEVER tested in ANY kind of judicial process).
How about Australia speedily passing a raft of ‘anti-terrorism’ laws following the July 7th 2005 London bombings, despite the fact that those events were not (and haven’t since been) the subject of an inquest, trial or public inquiry?
No judicial scrutiny of ghastly massacres. Anti-civil libverties laws rushed through as a result… Hello? Is anyone awake?
No-one in the mainstream media is awake, apparently.
That’s why we MUST keep the internet free - not just for the techno-savvy who can evade mandatory censorship, but for the broader majority who otherwise may ever find what they’re missing by way of ‘inconvenient’ information.
Don’t worry Syd; the Internet does not tolerate censorship.
@ fireflying
In a way you’re correct, but that’s why I included my last sentence.
Those motivated to do so can get round censorship walls - at present. But that leaves most people, who won’t try and who in any case won’t really ever know what they’re missing.
If you go into a Library, how do you know which books have been removed, if they’ve been taken off the shelves and deleted from the library database?
To be effective, censorship doesn’t have to be 100% effective.
Well howdy doody boys and girls, man, have you been dancing on mah head? And any other red-neck shit from tha deep north, south, Hi ya all.
I was browsing the Attorney General, Robert McClelland, and was confronted by yet another American import, which McClelland objected to. I wonder why???????
A lovely, light-hearted, racist romp through the wheat fields of South Australia.
The Church of Creativity: South Australia whose moral philosophy appears to be ‘If you’re not white, you’re not right’.
Why do all the barbarous American cults manifest themselves in Oz?
If we are going to indulge in hatred and racism, why can’t it at least be Australian hatred and racism? I realise Australians are apathetic and stupid, but why do we have to import America’s lunatic stupidity?
I despair about this country. Even Eric Butler’s League of Rights-hatred and right wing, vicious bile to the fore-Yes, even this little lot was an American import.
It’s as if America’s Joe McCarthy of the 1970s crusader against, and destroyer of all things left wing, died and his ashes were spread in Oz.
If we have to have filth, LET IT BE GOOD OLD AUSTRALIAN FILTH.
Goodnight.
Hello,left to my own devices without having any conversations about religion I would just dawdle on not thinking about it one way or another.It is only because I am confronted by religion that I have to organise my thoughts to refute what I don’t adhere to.To me this does not constitute religion.Cheers.
Thanks Venise.
Obsessed? I’m glad many are, you silly man. Silly because you then equate such feelings with voting preferences!
I’m fair to all politicians-I loathe the whole damn lot of them. I make as sure as I can in this vile voting system, that I have as much control of my vote that it will allow. I vote below the line. Not much better, but better than nothing.
I would vote the ‘Friends Of The Mafia Hotpot Supper Club’ in, before the Lab/Lib Party.
I have refused to vote before now when the choices were dire-and received a ‘just cause’ Summons. There is a way around that.
SW: apathy is the cancer of democracy. Selfishness too.
We have wantonly embraced the principle of divide and rule, by having no interest in anything that does not impact upon our own space.
@Elan
We need a mass protest march over the Aboriginal “Income Mangement” policy…a very Long March from Canberra to Alice Springs or Adelaide to Alice Springs.
Aiming for 10-20,000 people who are prepared to rough it by camping out and descending on Alice Springs ( very slowly ) and then peacefully occupying the town and creating enough civil disobedience and disruption until the govt overturns the policy.
Imagine the attention this would get from the international media and the embarrasment to the govt. Also, the US govt doesn’t want 20,000 people sniffing around Pine Gap, so it would n’t be long before our govt got a wisper in the ear from the US govt to do as they ask!!!
But it would need a spearhead…a Ghandi like figure, female or male it does n’t matter, but somebody who is inyaface enough, but still has a broader enough acceptance in the community to be taken seriously…someone like say…a Dick Smith…dunno just some quick thoughts, but we could even use Sponsors to fund it and set up sub committees in each state who report to a central committee on funding and organizing.
We might be surprised at the level of support from the rank & file…at the street level it’s very solid.
LCC my friend, how I wish that would happen. It won’t-because of that apathy and selfishness.
You are spot on of course. I am a firm believer in the ‘power of the people’. For that you need…: people!
We had a fairly (!!) questionable election here in SA on March 20th this year. I honestly have never seen an election like it in a so-called first world democratic country. Much of what happened never even reached the mainstream Murdoch media.
One man decided to challenge it in the Courts. A group of us backed him to the hilt.
MANY people protested on SA forums…MANY. But they would not ‘be seen’ to be doing that. This man fought on-we fought on. The case was quashed.
The decision was based quite correctly on Civil Law, but I have no doubt whatsoever that if those who protested so loudly had publicly shown their anger, the mainstream media would have seriously publicised the move. That in turn would have gained more attention.
THAT would have influenced the right kind of legal representation………………..and the outcome would have been different. I have not a shadow of doubt about that.
‘net censorship moves have been stayed because of the volume of protest. Without question.
People power….oh, and a looming election helps.
The significance of IM. has not yet ‘sunk in’. It isn’t affecting US-so WE don’t concern ourselves about it.
That is a mistake that will come back to haunt us.
(I have already seen one eloquent and anguished post from a single mother, already struggling with a disabled son, who was able to convey with calm resignation her incapacity to handle the added humiliation of getting vouchers for certain foods/shops. That post is worrying. Very worrying).
If we were able to do what you suggest, we could possibly change this thing. But it simply won’t happen.
I am no ‘Child of the Universe’, but I have lived in several countries because of my work, and that of my father previously.
Australia is by far the most apathetic country I have lived in. By far.
It won’t happen LCC-I wish to God it would.
(Eva Cox did mention in her article that most people were unaware of this move-I would suggest that even now-after some moderate publicity-; they still don’t. At the very least, the recipients of this move do not realise its impact.
And the Government wants it to remain that way).
Well howdy doody boys and girls; man, have you been dancin’ on mah head? And any other red-neck schlock from tha deep north, south, Hi ya all.
I was browsing the Attorney General, Robert McClelland, and was confronted by yet another American import, which McClelland objected to. I wonder why???????
A lovely, light-hearted, racist romp through the wheat fields of South Australia.
The Church of Creativity: South Australia; whose moral philosophy appears to be ‘If you’re not white, you’re not right’.
Why do all the barbarous American cults manifest themselves in Oz?
If we are going to indulge in hatred and racism, why can’t it at least be Australian hatred and racism? We Australians can be very stupid off our own bat, so why do we have to import America’s lunatic stupidity?
I despair about this country. Even Eric Butler’s League of Rights-hatred and right wing, vicious bile to the fore-Yes, even this little lot was an American import.
It’s as if America’s Joe McCarthy of the 1970s crusader against, and destroyer of all things left wing, died and his ashes were spread in Oz.
If we have to have filth, LET IT BE GOOD OLD AUSTRALIAN FILTH.
Goodnight.
Elan.re:apathy +1.apathyiscoolchillmandon’tcomplainfitindoesn’tbothermedon’tfussyairI’mgoodilliteratehuhyoureadtomuchgetoutmore
And there you see the clear result of deinstitutionalisation.
A lot of you seem to be getting sidetracked onto other issues such as religion v atheism or income management of the poor when the issue we need to focus on is freedom of speech as it applies to the internet. This is the thin edge of the wedge. Remember the internet is the only non controlled avenue left. It is monitored but the Govt. hasn’t pulled the “Patriot Act” , or whatever our version is called, on us yet. The MSM is owned by six corporations globally and they are beholden to the international bankers who either own them or control them through loans, or most probably both. These are same people who hold all the toxic derivatives (over one quadrillion US dollars by the way), expect continual bailouts from the world’s people, not just the Americans and who beneficially control the top 200 companies in most Western economies. By the way, just so you are in no doubt, three weeks ago, JP Morgan was listed as the major shareholder in BP globally (27.5%). BP is the corporation that has presided over the greatest environmental disaster in the history of the planet. The disaster that reporters from all new media are not allowed to report on, take pictures of or, infiltrate. The disaster that most media outlets including the propaganda vehicle the ABC is still calling a “a spill”!
You all seem to be circling the obvious conclusion but haven’t quite got there yet. Doesn’t it strike you as just a bit odd that some issues seem to be non negotiable across party lines no matter what the public thinks and how much they take to the steets. Issues like endless no win wars, policing of airports e.g. full body scanning, policing of the internet for example. And how about the all black ensemble of the Nazi carabinieri that faces off against unarmed student demonstrators these days when they take to the street on any issue that contravenes “correct thought”?
The sad truth is that Australia is up to its eyeballs in the Anglo American Empire and its international Ministry of Truth and it appears that no leader has the “bottle” to face it down. Whitlam tried and was thrown out quick smart. Mark “Taxi” Latham tried and went from king to kitchen hand in about three weeks of announcing a withdrawal from Iraq if elected. And I wouldn’t be holding out hope with Turnbull. He and Abbott are both Rhodes scholars, Oxford schooled in the glories of empire and its skullduggery, not to mention whatever other camaraderie they may enjoy. But what is most galling to me is the apparent “all the way with the Anglo-A” from the present bunch of would be internationalists presently in the driver’s seat. Is there no way out of this matrix? If you listened to Gillard going on about why Afghanistan is important in some speech today and how lives aren’t being wasted there, it is enough to make you puke; particularly from a supposed “leftie” ha ha ha! But our new PM remember has already gone on record as saying she is “a politician first”. Hidden in full view folks! She has given you the big clue in that early post Labor leader election speech while still euphoric and newspeak programming light.
Just for the record, I am not anti-war if we are defending ourselves;l I am not anti business if it is not receiving handouts or special prvileges fromGovt; but I am definitely anti imperialism; anti totalitarianism of the left or the right; and anti spin driven politics!
Yes Elan, I know you are right..and I was probably only dreaming, but What If Elan?…it’s not just a political issue, it’s a matter of conscience and transcends all social parameters…political, religious, secular….whatever and where ever, people of good conscience and hearts of flesh.
Why could n’t the Greens mobilize and and just tack on any concerned citizen from there on who have been shaken from their appathy and are prepared to throw caution to the wind…where there is a will surely there is away.
On the other hand(I can say this because I’m a white vaguely slobbish maybe bored westener and there will be no repercussions)apathy could be good for the balkans/middle east.Yair whatever.
@ELAN
$$$I would vote the ‘Friends Of The Mafia Hotpot Supper Club’ in, before the Lab/Lib Party.$$$
If you can name the exact restaurant, then you get an invitation to the next meeting as a valued guest with all expenses paid…no problem.
Davi..& Yair, rob??..hmmm…you’d be right.
David Robinson,thanks.I think.
@ELAN - “Australia is by far the most apathetic country I have lived in.” Once I used to hand out how to votes for the ALP and was often flabbergasted by the people who’d front up to vote and have to ask who we’re voting for this time! They didn’t know whether it was a state or federal election? I even asked a couple if they’d been overseas and missed the lead up to the election! I’m still amazed at peoples’ ignorance these days! How can you live here and not know anything about the election? Even in 2010 people are so ignorant about simple political things. They mustn’t go outside or read or watch TV?Scary isn’t it?
I always put the Coalition last! Except for some right wing nutter like the so-called ‘christian democrats’ in the Legislative Council in NSW! (Fred Nile and Co.) I put ‘good’ independents before Labor, and since the mid 1980’s I put the Greens first! My right arm would fall of if I helped elect a member of the Lib party! As for Abbott? I’ll make sure the Libs are last - really last next time!(I’ve gone from being in a safe Labor seat to a Liberal one(redistribution) that is held with less then a 2% margin??Australia is by far the most apathetic country I have lived in.?)
I vote below the line, and check my ballot paper frontwards and backwards to make sure it’s correct!Australia is by far the most apathetic country I have lived in.
Elan, if you aren’t marching on Alice Springs on election day and do actually vote (how else can your voice be heard?) you’ll put Lab/Lib last. Yet, in the House of Reps, one or the other is still likely to win in most of the federal seats in Australia. You must vote for both of them in order to successfully complete your ballot paper and have your vote count and be counted. They both disgust you but you still must vote for them in one order or the other. That is the best our democracy can offer at the federal level at the moment.
Which doesn’t help Liz ‘cause she’s going to put Liberal last every time come what may. So Conroy, Macklin and Co know they’ve got Liz’s vote, ahead of the Liberals, every single time - regardless of their policies. Sure, a number one for the Greens assures them the $1.50 each vote is worth but that’s not the real election. The real election is down there where you swap between Labor and Liberal. If you don’t vote no one is listening. If you spend all day baying at the bastards and then actually give them your vote (one ahead of the other) then you are treating yourself to the contempt with which you believe they hold you.
How do we stop that? Introduce OPTIONAL preferential voting - such as is already used in Queensland state elections. You can vote for one or all the candidates. And you don’t have to vote for someone you don’t wish to give a vote to. It works for me.
I never thought I would say this, but I think I’m going to have to vote Liberal over Labor at the next election. I honestly … never, ever thought I would.
With Conroy STILL insisting on censorship, I’ll be buggered before I vote for him or anyone associated with him.
A lovely mixed bag! Rather like me.
LIZ45: ‘onyer! Again, you took no offence. Apathy is a curse. A bloody curse! But Government/s love it……..until it affects them adversely..
VENISE: Who is dancing on your head? Tell them to stop! It will make a very bad impression on your mind..
LCC: I love your passion for com-passion! I suspect you are young?? I promise I will not patronise you. But LCC, I’m old ugly and cynical. I’m uncertain but I suspect the Greens backed this,-I’ll find out tomorrow..
I wish we had what you describe. If you are younger, then it is implicit on people who think like you to at least attempt to influence thinking along more caring lines.
DON: with a name like yours-you would know. See you there.
RICHARD WILSON: The issue is NOT ‘Freedom of Speech as it applies to the Internet’.
I am only too well aware of introducing the ‘variance’ of IM to this thread. It was deliberate and calculated.
The issue is the inexorable erosion of human freedom in a country that is globally designated a democracy. It is a creeping cancer, and unless we protest the component parts of this increasing desire for control by late 20/early 21st ‘democratic’ Governments;-then we will inevitably be consumed by the whole.
And we will wonder how the hell it got to that!!
Mucrawl: You are rather silly aren’t you? Or do you see me as silly? (wait for it!!). Do you really believe that I don’t know all that?
ANS has already alluded to the utter desperation of resorting to a vote for the Libs!
I like your last para though! OPV is better than nothing. Being free to vote is the ultimate freedom though. Not the furphy of being able to have a vote.
What use is a bloody vote for the major’s in particular? Preselection/factionalism decides the candidate-not us. We are then forced to vote for those who are shoved at us by the ‘back-room boys’.
It is an utter bloody disingenuous farce!
As for ‘spending all day baying at the bastards’. No. Not all day. That would be a waste of time. They’re not worth that.
Will I give any of them an easy run? No I will not. Neither should you. Neither should any one of us.
If we got of our lazy bums and held ‘the bastards’ to account every damn day, we would not have half the problems we have.
But we don’t care.
We are selfish.
We are apathetic.
Or we have a blind loyalty to the LabLibGreenInd Party.
___________________________________
DAVIROB: I hope you have now taken your Lithium and are feeling calmer. That’s sincere believe it or not.
RICHARD WILSON: Religion has EVERYTHING to do with Bernard Keane’s editorial. Ditto with what the comentariat have been discussing.
It was members of the Christian Church Lobby group who rushed off to Senator Conroy wanting an internet filter. Were they wanting to stop violence? No. Did they wish to stop racism and it’s madder acolytes? No. Did they wish to encourage art? Literature? Sculpture? No, no and no again.
As with all religious sects, cults and religions, they had their heads firmly up their bums and their eyes fixed on their reproductive organs. Sex must not be encouraged they scream in their demented fury. (all of them having had a multitude of children) And, quite rightly, they express concern about children being molested.
Senator Conroy, a fervid, self-described ‘Conservative Catholic’, needed no encouragement. Damn the fact it was about O.5% of the population who were doing it. ‘We are going to stop the whole population from viewing kiddie porn’. Damn the business community for having to trade with America-which doesn’t have a restricted filter, and so on, and so on.
Thus, RICHARD WILSON, do we have the results of what is inflicted on the electorate, IN THE NAME OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF.
Some of the wise and wonderful cults who are dictating to us, the taxpaying clowns whose money goes to support them.
The Church of Creativity: South Australian charter
Hill Song?? (Steve Fielding’s mob)
The Catholic Church
Jehovah’s Witnesses
Christian Fellowship (Aus)
Mormons
Moonies
Children of God
Christian Science
Seventh Day Adventists
The something or other with the word Fire in the title. Danny Nailluh (?)
The Exclusive Brethren
The Methodists
The Anglicans
Pentacostalists
Anyway, RICHARD WILSON, these, as you well know, are the people who would have Australians denied of up to date technology. And Tony Abbott and Senator Conroy are just the people to impose the will of the barbarians onto the whole of this country. The ninety nine point five percent of us who have no interest at these sites, in the first place.
@SYD WALKER
(How about the Port Arthur massacre, the most violent ‘terror incident’ ever on Australian soil, )
I did read somewhere once that surving witnesses to the carnage all swore that the shooter was right handed. And yet the suspect Bryant was apparently left handed…I wonder if this can be independently substantiated.
Elan, before you drown in your own tears have a look at what you wrote back there: “Preselection/factionalism decides the candidate-not us. We are then forced to vote for those who are shoved at us by the ‘back-room boys’.”
How in the world do you think it would work if “we” selected who the candidates are going to be? If you are a member of a political party you might (maybe, sometimes, if you’re lucky) be able to participate in a preselection process - as it should be. That is why people join parties. It is a perfectly appropriate manifestation of ‘democratic’ political process. Oh but you want to be able to select a Party candidate without being a member of the Party. Yeah, right. Elan, that is not a democratic process and you know it and no doubt you are about to re-remind me that you know all this stuff. No successful politician claims to be a know-all.
If you personally want to nominate and run you are perfectly entitled to do so. If you need supporters (besides LCC) to barrack for you then it is entirely appropriate that you personally work the crowd and attract that support. If you just can’t get anyone to support your campaign it might be that you simply don’t have the personal qualities and nous for the job. It is possible you know? Yelling at your detractors - part of your potential electorate - and telling them they are apathetic (like all the rest apparently) simply confirms their view that you don’t have the political skills necessary for that kind of occupation. In my experience, you are far from alone. In fact you are part of an enormous majority. After all, who in their right mind really and truly wants to be a warts and all politician?
Hugh McColl:
Something for loyal Labor voters to think about here: remember what happens to beaten wives who give their husbands unconditional love. If you do not punish Labor for walking all over your values, it will always do so.
On the other hand, if you teach Labor a lesson, what’s the worst that can happen? A Coalition government will not destroy the country in one term. Australia will still be here in another three years’ time. The NBN and some of the Labor reforms you have been anticipating will have to wait a bit longer. Employment and your superannuation funds will grow bigger because big new taxes will not be introduced.
An Abbott-led Coalition government will actually do very little, other than tweak a few laws here and there and let Australians do what they do best within the existing framework, with minimal interference or big surprises from government. That’s not laziness or lack of imagination, that’s what they actually believe in. Three years later, the economy will still be here, it will be running strong, debt will be reduced, and you will be able to vote for the big Labor reforms once again.
And Labor will learn its lesson for next time: they are answerable to you. Don’t act like a bunch of all-forgiving sycophants.
LAST CHANCE CAFÉ: “where there is a will surely there is a way”.
Also: “Where there’s will, there’s a relative.”
ERRATUM: Should read, “Where there’s a Will there’s a relative.”
RICHARD WILSON: Your whole comment ending:-
“Just for the record, I am not anti-war if we are defending ourselves; I am not anti business if it is not receiving handouts or special privileges from Govt; but I am definitely anti imperialism; anti totalitarianism of the left or the right; and anti spin driven politics!” was excellent.
I hope it did not seem as if I was hectoring you. Rather, I seized on the opportunity you gave me to point out the ills of religion, and my outrage that we have, in Parliament, Ministers who are so lacking in moral fibre they have the nerve to hold their religious beliefs as being more important than the oath they took to defend the country, and serve the people, upon entering Parliament.
These people would have been judged to be traitors in an earlier period of history.
POWERISNOTSTRENGTH: Forgive me for saying also,
‘LOGICISNOTYOURSTRENGTH’
@HUGH MC - “Which doesn’t help Liz ‘cause she’s going to put Liberal last every time come what may. So Conroy, Macklin and Co know they’ve got Liz’s vote, ahead of the Liberals, every single time - regardless of their policies.”
Labor will only be assured of getting my vote if not enough people put The Greens first. If enough people vote for The Greens candidate, my preferences won’t go to anyone - they woon’t be required? I don’t have the responsiblity to eliminate either of the candidates of the major parties. My responsibity is to ensure that first of all I vote, and then to vote correctly. The system of voting is not my fault, and I’d prefer not to have to number every square. I prefer optional preferential. So, instead of wanting to blame me if Labor wins, or be responsible for them taking me for granted, why don’t you act in a fair manner by putting the blame where it belongs - with those who uphold the present untrue and unjust method of voting! While there have been some ‘tweaking’ around the edges via redistribution etc, the fact remains, that this system of voting does not give an accurate message re the will of the people. In the Senate, the fact that Fielding was elected with only 2% or less of the primary vote adds weight to my view, not puts me up there for you to criticize or judge - you’re just adding to the injustice of ‘the system’? Shame on you!
There’s not one policy now or has never been of the Liberal Party that even allows me to give them one minute of my time to ponder, let alone allow them a chance at govt. Sadly, it’s the case of a lesser of two evils. On all areas of life and justice, I don’t support them; I don’t trust them, and history has proved me correct each time - in my view! They sicken me, and they owe a reaffirmation of this view to Howard, Costello, Abbott, Minchin, Brandis - and they’re just a few of the names at the forefront of my thinking! A good example of the injustice of this was the Senate poll in 1975. Labor got 3,313,000 votes and got only 11 seats, while the National Party with 3,248,000 votes got 23 seats. Tell me how that’s fair and accurate! I have a very long memory, I’ve been voting since at least 1967 when I voted “YES” in the Referendum re indigenous people and their inclusion in the Constitution etc!
@POWERISNOTSTRENGTH - ” Something for loyal Labor voters to think about here: remember what happens to beaten wives who give their husbands unconditional love.”
I take exception to your use of this comment? What exactly does it mean? Do you also use the saying ‘as a rule of thumb’? Do you know the origins of that much used and abused saying. As an abused wife, I object to your flimsy banter re such a serious and horrific crime. You wouldn’t glibly used ‘house or bank robbing’ would you? So why this? Says a lot about you and your sensibilities, not to mention total ignorance of reality, or worse still, a frivolous attitude to the suffering of others!
@VENISE - (Sunday 2.45pm )- I agree - totally! How many horrific and unjust situations would’ve and sadly, would in the futre be avoided, if politicians religious beliefs could not be used when discussing policy. Further, no political donations from religious organisations, and no speaking at Hillsong(Costello etc - Sydney Pentacostal group) etc. No ‘doorstop interviews’ outside churches etc! No seeking out cardinals etc to put forward educational policies etc.
Totally and heartilly sick to death of their influence on politics and therefore our lives. All the ‘groups’ that you’ve mentioned have had several(in some cases, many or heaps) negative influences on the decision making processes of govt/justice/human rights etc, at all levels? They should have no more right to put forward their views(read dogma) than ordinary citizens! Enough!
LIZ45, do you disagree with the analogy then? Do you suggest that beaten wives should give their husbands unconditional love to avoid being beaten? As (your own words, not mine) “a rule of thumb”?
POWERISNOTSTRENGTH; As I said somewhere else LOGICISNOTYOURSTRENGTH. I think Liz is going to have you for breakfast. And I have to miss the fun.
BTW: On wife beating I am in lock step with LIZ.
@POWERISNOTSTENGTH - “LIZ45, do you disagree with the analogy then?” Most definitely NOT
! Don’t mistake the fact of women staying in an abusive relationship with a pwoman’s commitment to “unconditional love”? The fact is, that most women are bashed, tortured,raped and or murdered AFTER they leave the abuser? They remain for many reasons, and one of them is fear. Another could be financial - they can’t see themselves being able to set up another suitable home for their kids;(there were no women’s refuges, women’s health centres; domestic violence hotlines; no sole parent benefit etc in my day?) their work situation, their kids’ school etc. Some only want the violence to stop, they don’t necessarily want the relationship to end - just the violence. Some women don’t have any support from family members; some family members may believe that marriage is forever etc, regardless of whether a woman is being bashed or not. There are many reasons, each one of them is valid. It is impossible to have or receive “unconditional love” if your very liberty is erroded via violence! It’s impossible!
Only this year in NSW has any emphasis let alone money($45 million - a start I hope?) for women and kids to stay in the home, and the perpetrators to leave. In the near future, all homicides that involve women will be subjected to scrutiny by a special homicide task force, that will investigate all aspects of the death/s to see if there’s any history of violence, and or any way that the death could have been prevented - this will also include ‘accidental deaths’ and possible ‘suicides’? I believe that some, if not all States will be adopting this recommendation. Many people involved in the horrific stats re the deaths of women by a violent partner/s have been struggling for this outcome now for some time! A woman dies in Australia in this manner, by their violent partner every 7-10 days! Goodness knows how many kids are also killed, and how many more are damaged for years maybe forever.
75% of women who’ve been abused have mentioned it to some other person/s? Sometimes, there assertions have not been taken seriously, all too frequently by police also. Hopefully, this will now change. In my case, my friend took me and my 2 toddlers to see a Chamber Magistrate, who told me to, “go home, be a good wife, and cook his favourite meal’? I kid you not! I’ll never forget his words. It was another 16-17 yrs before I took action, as I believed that if HE acted this way, what hope did I have? His family didn’t want to know! I was isolated and alone! I’m now a passionate advocate for the real freedom of women and their kids!
The “rule of thumb” origins? Years ago, 1800’s plus? men could beat their wives, as long as the ‘stick’ used was no thicker than their thumb? You’ll never hear women who know about this, to use this phrase. I always make sure that people are aware of it - male or female! I find it repugnant!
By using the analogy of women’s “unconditional love” re their reason for staying with abusive men, you’re almost accusing them of being responsible for the violence - of any type - physical, emotional, sexual, social abuse, rather than putting the blame and responsibility squarely where it belongs - with the perpetrators - ALWAYS! If there’s no excuse for using violence on the street, in the workplace or at the pub etc, there’s less excuse to use it against people they profess to love!
Even when people leave their cars unlocked prior to them being stolen, they’re still not made to be the criminals in such events. Only victims of abuse, mostly women, are held responsible for crimes committed against them. Until people, all people in this country call these crimes for what they are - gutless and horrific, will they stop. Your sort of language is ‘sweet music’ to perpetrators - it lets them off the hook! In future - THINK!
If you put ‘domestic violence’ into your search engine, you can take your pick of tens of millions of articles, informative essays etc re this issue. Check out the stats with the National Crime Authority or your state police. And then, go to the White Ribbon Day website, and Take the Oath! Please!
Liz I’ll tell you something for free and then I’m going to disengage. If I were the sadistic type I could control you easily just by pushing your buttons and then standing back while you exhaust yourself.
Over and out.
@VENISE
#I promise I will not patronise you. But LCC, I’m old ugly and cynical. #
I know, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder..LoL!!!
@POWERISNOTSTRENGTH - In that case, you’d be no better than the bastard who used to abuse me by engaging in acts that would scare my kids, so that when they started to cry or scream, he’d keep it up until I answered what he wanted - and how he wanted, perhaps until I said ‘sorry’ for committing some ‘crime’! This could include driving around in circles in the car while they were toddlers, going faster and faster! What makes your attitude/behaviour any different to his?
It’s exactly the same mentality!
Another little sadistic game he liked, was taking a step back, putting his hand on my forehead, then inviting me to hit him, goading, inciting, tortmenting for ages, making sure that even if I wanted to I’d never conect. If I tried to extract myself he’d grab me by the hair or??His arm was a foot longer than mine,and he was at least 25-30 kilos heavier! A real brave bastard!
When did you stop hitting your wife?
@ Forensic
FWIW, my impression is that the only people who defend the official story of the Port Arthur massacre are people who have never encountered the critiques with an open mind. The mass media helps ensure that’s most people.
A handful of references, last two by yours truly (though I’m not expert on this topic - far from it):
http://100777.com/node/979
http://www.whale.to/b/wernerhoff.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj7oveOuOvk
http://www.globebuster.com/shoot/portarthur.html
http://www.cairnsblog.net/2007/12/howards-end-due-process-to-be-resumed.html
http://sydwalker.info/blog/2009/04/15/eyes-that-shame-australian-journalism/
As with 9-11 and the 7-7 London bombings, the real question is why the mass media treat the official story like a compulsory religion.
Liz, hundreds and hundreds of words to explain why you won’t deviate, ever, from putting Labor ahead of Liberal. Keep in mind that you are not voting in the Reps for the Prime Minister you are voting for a local member. The present system might not be ‘fair’ in your mind but you are still able to manoeuvre within it just exactly the same as every other single voter. If you vote against the Labor candidate in your electorate (because of repugnant policies about censorship, asylum seekers, climate change or whatever) your single vote does not bring about a change of government but it may well put the skids under a local candidate in a marginal electorate. Don’t they deserve to know how much your vote means for you? If you refuse to make a tactical move against your own local candidate all because of a larger strategic sense of obligation to the Party, then so be it. But it is you and not the ‘system’ that invokes that obligation. Only you can decide that there is no such thing as a democratic choice. Only you can tie your own hands and announce that your major party vote is only available to Labor.
I withdraw the analogy “remember what happens to beaten wives who give their husbands unconditional love,” while marking with some amazement how my choice of analogy triggers such a verbose torrent of child-abuse accusations. I could compare fanatically loyal party voters to religious cult members instead. Strangely, Liz, even when you quote statistics on the vast abundance of DV, it never occurs to you that you might be addressing one of its survivors (as distinct from victims who let it define them). We don’t all go around accusing everyone who uses a key word or phrase of being a ghost from our past, you know. Why don’t you start your own blog about DV, it might actually help somebody instead of just derailing discussions.
@HUGH - Yes I vote for a local candidate or member, but added together, these individuals can and do make a govt. I don’t want a Coalition govt! OK? It is a nonsense to use the ‘you’re just an individual’ argument, when you know that enough of those form a govt. The sitting member in my electorate is a Liberal(although she doesn’t like to advertise that fact on her flyers etc?) and I want to get rid of her! There’s been a redistributioon, and she holds the seat by less than 2% - I was previously in a safe Labor seat. I do not like this person, and I don’t like her attitude to many things including workers and asylum seekers. She used to justify WorstChoices, even though many in this area were treated badly by it.
I’d prefer it if the Greens candidate won, but I don’t want Liberal. OK? I’m not keen on the ALP these days. As I said, the lesser of two evils. Why do you think you have to question or change my mind? Because I’m stupid? Because I’m just a woman? What is your issue? I’ve been voting since 1967 - I have had the experience you know. I’m a competent, capable adult! Goodness me!
@POWERetc - People like you are as predictable as night follows day. You make the first mention or sexist or ignorant comment/ statement, and when someone like me responds, you make out I have a ‘victim persona’ or some other negative rot! If you’re so insensitive as to not give a thought to stupid comments or phrases that you use, you deserve what you get. I remained silent for too many years. In that time, too many women lost their lives; had their lives ruined; suffered from either PTSD or Cumulative Stress Disorder, and too many women still are. Many women don’t feel confident, or don’t have english as a 1st language; are still living in fear of retribution etc or are flat out, worn out raising kids etc. I’m in a priviledged position, in that I have the time, the information, supportive backup and personal awareness of the ‘games’ and other ‘weapons’ still used by people like you to denigrate or lessen their claims of abuse, and the ramifications. So tough! Think before you open your mouth. If you really are a survivor, you’d show more awareness and sensitivity!
Incidently, people who’ve been subjected to any form of abuse are victims. People who commit the abuse/s are perpetrators - another title is criminal. It’s OK to recognise a person who’s bashed in order to steal their mobile phone or handbag as a victim, but a woman who’s been bashed/raped etc is thought of in a negative manner if she’s angry or bitter or even remembers the event/s. Then, victim is used(by others - with their own agendas?) as a negative - some trait of their personality that is a ‘problem’ or shouldn’t be given any credence. This is a form of censorship - to demean and diminish the degree of pain, hurt, humiliation etc and make the victim partly to blame. I don’t buy it any more, for myself or others.
If you want me to believe that you’re a caring and aware person - act like it! The first thing you could do is apologise or withdraw the comment which you have; the next is to accept my rights, not use patronising language to belittle my assertions - I’ve been ‘patted’ on the head so much, my skull should be flat on top????
@Poweretc - Actually, his aim was not child abuse but abuse of me. Making me distressed because my babies were - that was his goal? He didn’t care how much distress he caused them. If you had/have even a tiny degree of insight into how the suffering of others and themselves damages growing children’s emotional growth, then I suggest that instead of spending time here, you do some serious reading - before you really damage somebody, adult or child?
Is this blog about the internet filter?
Reading? Just listen to yourself, you quote figures about how common DV is, do you think you’re the only one? I repeat - and I meant it seriously - why don’t you start your own blog column on this, I think your experiences and insights would really help people. As opposed to taking over discussions about Labor’s internet filtering policy or anything else, just because I used a taboo analogy. What do you think I am, a nom-de-plume of your ex?
powerisnotstrength, originally you could have chosen a different example such as: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.” It’s biblical (Proverbs 26:11 I think), it’s eyecatching and it’s apt - especially for Labor voters who just can’t stop going back to the steaming pile despite a stick-in-the-throat texture. Fortunately, in a few minutes Mr Crikey will come again to save us from ourselves. Look busy!
@Fitter - I didn’t go off topic, they did! Read!
@Hugh - Your comment is even more offensive! You obviously think that there’s none of the ‘steaming stuff’ when it comes to the Coalition? Have you had a lobotomy or just been out of the country for years? Lost your memory or suffer from convenient amnesia? If ever I was going to be passionately against even accidently helping these bastards, it would be now, since Abbott became leader of the pack!
With your attitude, one thing worse about the filter could be, if you had any control over it!
POWER etc - It’s nice to see that some people have the capacity to admit they’ve blundered! Learnt something I hope?
Hugh McColl, point taken. I like your line better than my own … touche. Bonus points if you resist the temptation to make any of several obvious replies to Elan.
Liz, how about a deal: I will avoid taboo analogies and other references that may cause that sort of offence, if you will start up a DV blog column in Crikey Blogs or elsewhere for the support of people suffering or recovering from domestic violence.
I note that in spite of the abundance of domestic violence in Australia and its crushing effect both on the wellbeing of its victims and on the development of children, either direct victims or bystanders … there is very little in the way of online domestic violence blogging.
Why is that? To me you are the clear choice for someone to break this silence. I think it would really help people. While I admire the way you bravely speak out, I think it would be more effective in a single column where people can go for advice and sharing their experiences, rather than in threads about unrelated subjects like internet censorship, etc, even if I did inadvertently cause a crossed wire.
What do you think - deal?
Powerisnotstrength - Proverbs 26 remember. There’s a second line - something about the sow, having cleaned herself, returns to the muck. Now if we can have a trumpet fanfare or election announcement Jesus might just do his thing all over again and everything will be alright.
@POWERISNOTSTENGTH - “LIZ45, do you disagree with the analogy then?” Most definitely NOT
! Don’t mistake the fact of women staying in an abusive relationship with a woman’s commitment to “unconditional love”? The fact is, that most women are bashed, tortured,raped and or murdered AFTER they leave the abuser? They remain for many reasons, and one of them is fear. Another could be financial - they can’t see themselves being able to set up another suitable home for their kids;(there were no women’s refuges, women’s health centres; domestic violence hotlines; no sole parent benefit etc in my day?) their work situation, their kids’ school etc. Some only want the violence to stop, they don’t necessarily want the relationship to end - just the violence. Some women don’t have any support from family members; some family members may believe that marriage is forever etc, regardless of whether a woman is being bashed or not. There are many reasons, each one of them is valid. It is impossible to have or receive “unconditional love” if your very liberty is eroded via violence! It’s impossible!
LIZ: Very, very well said, if I may say so!
LIZ “75% of women who’ve been abused have mentioned it to some other person/s? Sometimes, there assertions have not been taken seriously, all too frequently by police also. Hopefully, this will now change.”
Wonderfully written, and utterly correct. I would say more, but I have a permanent stalker who reads everything I write. Hoping, ever hoping it will get the chance to crucify me.
Hallelujah! praise the Lord!! We have male bonding!
That is sooooo sweet!
LIZ: “By using the analogy of women’s “unconditional love” re their reason for staying with abusive men, you’re almost accusing them of being responsible for the violence - of any type - physical, emotional, sexual, social abuse, rather than putting the blame and responsibility squarely where it belongs - with the perpetrators - ALWAYS! If there’s no excuse for using violence on the street, in the workplace or at the pub etc, there’s less excuse to use it against people they profess to love!”
Thank you LIZ, for setting it out so well. Even my stalker should understand your words, if it wasn’t so full of rancid hatred.
LAST CHANCE CAFé:
“@VENISE
#I promise I will not patronise you. But LCC, I’m old ugly and cynical. #
I know, but beauty is in the eye of the beholder..LoL!!!”
Run that past me again?
I’m sure you are absolutely beautiful, but what prompted your comment?
Howdy folks. LB here, your trusty website ed.
Just a quick comment to say I’ve been scrolling up this page and the discussion at times has gotten a wee bit nasty, and a little off track from the central ideas of BK’s story. Just a reminder that at Crikey us folk believe it is best to “play the ball and not the person” and if you’re interested you can take a look at our code of conduct page here: http://www.crikey.com.au/about/code-of-conduct/
It’s enough to make you want to put a mandatory filter on the internet!
…….”I’m sure you are absolutely beautiful, but what prompted your comment?”
Hah!! Lovely!
Sorry Venise, the quote was mine. LCC got a bit mixed up!
___________________________
How diplomatic is that Luke B!!
I have been following this discussion thread with increasing bemusement , and based on the concept of “6° of separation” Iwould assume that in a day or two the discussion may again be concerned with Conroy’s Internet filter as a result of one of the red herrings in the discussion accidentally straying back into the original topic .
ELAN: lol, rotf. That was very funny. Hahahahahaha, hehehehehehehe
LIZ: I am appalled at what you went through. Absolutely appalled. Totally beyond my comprehension, fortunately.
LUKE B: The sound your hear is me scuttling back, to be back, on track. Olé
Sorry to hear that you are bemused GA.
I suppose it is a terrible shock because it has never happened before.
@VENISE - Thank you - again! I appreciate it very much. My desire is that these types of situations were not part of my world - but they are! One day, this reality will be as unpopular with all responsible adults, as driving a car while drunk! Years ago, that was a recognised ‘sport’ - beat the cops? These days it’s more than irresponsible, and definitely ‘unfunny’! Do you know who the stalker is? Can I help?
@HUGH - The less said about your comments the better! Perhaps if you purchased a Thesaurus, you could avoid the disgusting analogies! You demean yourself!
@POWER etc - If by this encounter it will make you more aware and more sensitive in future - good! I’ve thought about your suggestion re a blog - for sometime in the future. It’s part of my overall goal!
@Luke - I hope you noticed what prompted this discussion, and that Crikey commit itself to not allowing these type of sexist, ignorant, incorrect and damaging comments to be made. DV is a global/national issue - we all have a joint responsibility- particularly men! I refuse to be the butt of sexist/disparaging comments and remain silent! I’m a big ‘girl’ and can look after myself - these days!
FOR THE TECHNICALLY MINDED: There us an interesting article in today’s Oz, WATCH OUT FOR A REVOLUTION ON THE SCREEN AT HOME. It’s to do with the internet content, and its convergence with TV.
“We are getting closer to a convergence of TV and internet content and that is when the game really does change. Our TV will become a giant window for the internet. It will get to know what we like, what music to offer us, and it will connect out TV viewing to our social networking and e-mail.” (Simon Van Wyk)
It sounds amazing doesn’t it?
And do you know what happened when Senator Conroy read that article? He had an orgasm. “Total power now belongs to me!” he yodelled.
And how will he justify his total interference-and the by then millions of public servants sent to do his bidding. Mark my words, he will say, gringe and scringe.
Picture Charles Dickens’ Fabian, and you will get what I mean. “Now that everything is available on the big screen, we don’t want to ruffle the feathers of the religiously inclined, so we will have to clean everything up so the kiddies will be able to watch it.”
Overnight we will find the commercial TV stations will reduce the content down to the level of four-year-old children. “Sorry big business, sorry art and culture, sorry anyone who can think, sorry fine music. But the mums and dads; (the ones who are too lazy to impose their own filters), you, and your bubs are far more important than the rest of the community.”
Pardon me while I vomit.
ELAN: “The issue is the inexorable erosion of human freedom in a country that is globally designated a democracy. It is a creeping cancer, and unless we protest the component parts of this increasing desire for control by late 20/early 21st ‘democratic’ Governments;-then we will inevitably be consumed by the whole. And we will wonder how the hell it got to that!!”
What makes you think the creeping cancer of excess control is anti-democracy, rather than a product of democracy? Whether or not this internet filter, and the income management, specifically have popular support, they are logical progressions of the habit of voters to call for legislative solutions - especially federal legislative solutions - to every problem.
Democracy does not equal freedom, just ask the Zimbabweans. A properly free country places institutional limits on the ability of the executive, and the parliament, and the people, to govern by whim. The proper role of the federal parliament is to handle international affairs and the few laws that really need to be pan-national, as well as to veto acts of democratic tyranny by the states.
Later
POWERISNOTSTRENGTH: I misjudged you. “It is a creeping cancer, and unless we protest the component parts of this increasing desire for control by late 20/early 21st ‘democratic’ Governments;-then we will inevitably be consumed by the whole. And we will wonder how the hell it got to that!!”
I would have thought it was more like a galloping cancer.
Regrettably the owner of nearly all our MSM, especially the HS and its ilk makes sure that the readers don’t have the mental capacity to understand this surrender of the individual into the giant jaws of mediocrity, and meretricious demands by our Senator Conroys and Steve Fieldings, and John Howards-who, in the singular, is still running the Liberal Party.
Quite frankly I’ve got to the stage that I no longer believe Australia is a democracy.
Unless one could call ‘rule by the mob’ is a democracy. I can’t.
That first paragraph was a quote from Elan, by the way. But I’ll take the credit if you like it that much.
This is getting comical!!
Liz, you buy in, boots and all, to a politically charged conversation in an independent news medium dedicated to “blogs and commentary on politics, media, business, the environment and life” - that’s Crikey. We were talking about strategies and tactics, about how to get certain legislation through a resisting electorate or how to throw a sop to your supporters while sticking a knife into your enemies, all the while holding half the electorate (the other half?) in some sort of thrall. I simply do not accept that you can be “offended” by the cut and thrust of such a conversation when nothing whatsoever has been directed by me at you personally. Nothing.
However, when you claim to have been an elector for at least 40 years and to be an unflinching Labor supporter from NSW, I really wonder how you deal with your state government. Are you so dyed-in-the-wool that only a Labor state government will ever do, for you, in NSW? I can see how that must be a difficult quandary for many people in NSW but really, is there no limit to the depths Labor supporters are prepared to go to maintain an out-of-time government? If you are so horrified by the perversion of ‘democracy’ in our political system and you are so experienced - from right in the middle of that bizarre ‘steaming pile’ NSW government - then what is the process for dealing with the rotten part of the corpse? Surely, when all else has been tried, it’s Labor supporters that pull the pin? Just like they did in Canberra a couple of weeks ago - only in NSW it really will have to be a vote from the electorate. How do you motivate a seemingly completely bamboozled (and so easily!) electorate that it must make a considered choice rather than simply following age old tradition. Maybe you don’t do that, maybe you just accept that this is as good as it gets. Ho hum.
#Sorry Venise, the quote was mine. LCC got a bit mixed up!#
Sorry girls ( Venise & Elan )..my mistake, I think.
Hugh McColl, I think it’s a sort of a religion thing for many Labor people. They would no more vote for Coalition than a churchgoer would attend a black mass just because the priesthood have behaved poorly, burned a few heretics at the stake or something.
And before anyone starts about religion, that’s an analogy. A-N-A-L-O-G-Y.
Now you’ve gone all anal.
Hey Elan, Venise (and even James K) Doesn’t all this Crikey chestbeating about censorship fly in the face of its own simply opaque moderating actions? Just asking……
SBH: As a purveyor and disseminator of news, sport, literature, etc, Crikey has the right to print their opinions. The sort of people who might take exception to their opinions can’t read, or won’t read it.
The fact that they moderate the Crikey commentariat, is indeed moderation, not censorship. As they explain, they will moderate the people who play the man and not the ball. Ditto some of the excessive swear words.
As one of their victims, and in the heat of the moment, I resent it. But in the cold, harsh light of reality, I have to say they are entitled to do this.
Don’t forget we can, if we feel hardly done by, appeal to the judges at Crikey. A service completely denied to anyone-unless they are prepared to pay heaps in legal expenses-who might feel hardly done by, by the Steve Conroys in our parliament.
SBH: All parties which provide a medium of communication have every right to edit, moderate, or censor it. There’s a free market with multiple providers, all exercising their own discretion. Anyone doesn’t like it, they can find another or start their own. The difference between that and one national agency controlling everything at once, is whether users have a choice.
@HUGH@POWERetc - You two are amazing! Hugh, you speak as though the Coalition has an untainted history. Let me remind both of you that I was voting in NSW while Askin was Premier, and during the Royal Commission into the corrupt Police Service, which was ardently fought against by the then Liberal Govt? I’m not convinced that the Police Service is squeaky clean these days. I don’t approve of the powers that they’ve been given - John Hatton, the then Independent Member for the Sth Coast doesn’t think so either! I don’t have any faith in Barry O’Farrell - at best he’s weak and lazy. He hasn’t put forward one constructive policy, and we’re less than a yr from an election. I’ve maintained all along, that it’s the system of voting that is the problem - I AM FORCED TO FILL OUT MY BALLOT PAPER!!!!Did you hear? I HAVE NO CHOICE!
Then, let’s have a look at the Federal Coaliton? I refer to the Coaliton’s behaviour in 1975! I also remember all that went on in the intervening years. I certainly remember every seedy, nasty, tricky and rat-cunning behaviours of Howard and his band of bullies. WorstChoices, AWB, Asylum Seekers, Anti-Terrorism Legislation, Iraq, Afghanistan etc. Too many of his mates are still there, and I have less trust or respect for them than Labor? If Labor had done half of the shabby, shonky and disgusting behaviours that Howard had, they’d be crucified!
I also recall who’s introduced the humane policies whether in the workplace or wherever, and it hasn’t been the Coalition! It was either the ALP or people in the workplace, or women like me who fought and still fight against male dominance and oppression! Just like yours!
Finally, when all the justifications/realities for my reasons are exhausted - there’s one really good one left - it’s MY business, and MY right to vote how I wish! I have nothing but contempt for the Coalition! Every time one of them opens their mouth, they remind me why I hold them in such contempt!
I’ve been insulted by experts, you don’t bother me at all! Either of you! Just more examples of bullies - oh yes, under the guise of “cut and thrust” debate? Funny how you use different language to the blokes??????Particularly when they disagree with you!
G’day SBH: actually I don’t see moderation as any different to censorship. They are shades of the same thing.
I accept though that any website owners have to keep an eye on things-they will cop it, if something defamatory gets by.
What I don’t like is that auto systems can (and do here), hold a post for a possible default, and that post is then judged by a hewing bean (as my Grandy used to call us!).
That is where human fallibility comes in,-we all have a different value systems/political-philosophical stances. I don’t buy the ‘breach of forum rules’ for a second, they,-like Government policies are a bendy toy!
However…As I said, you would be hard pressed to find such a benign and friendly caution as put up by Luke B! I was very impressed impressed-truthfully!
(Not that it made one damn bit of difference!! We make assertions like kids in front of the Headmaster;-and then go off again like a cart load of monkey’s.
Innit’ loverly?
_______________________
……personally I think I put that pretty well….without the bloody pompous lecture from……er, PIS..
You think Barry O’Farrell has no plans?
Just for one example, he plans to stimulate regional NSW with:
- 40% of planned new jobs pushed out to regional NSW
- $7,000 relocation grants for Sydney people moving out to regional NSW (up to 10,000 per year)
- Land release accelerated
Remember NSW Labor’s big transport plan last election? 90 per cent of it related to Victoria Road and the Inner West Metro. The reasons were never actually explained, even though the entire state was supposed to pay for it while their own services were being cut back to the 1950s. When infrastructure spending is all concentrated on a small area close to the city, you can bet it’s a deal over nothing but key property prices. No surprise from Labor, no surprise at all.
When the Labor premier tries to do something that isn’t corrupt, they sack him.
But anyway, go on and worship at the Church Of Labor, I’m sure your local member will smile at you and say nice things and assure you that he or she really cares.
Elan - You don’t see any difference between Crikey’s moderation and a mandatory government filter?
Crikey is a privately owned website; do you think you have some kind of inalienable right over it?
No wonder you people are in such a quandary. You really don’t don’t get it, do you. The filter policy is not a case of Labor stepping to the right. It’s the nanny state - uniform from coast to coast, inescapable except by leaving your country, ultimately enforceable with prison terms if necessary.
What, did you think the gradual encroachment of rules and controls would be only the ones you wanted? That is just so cute!
Liz, you are back and firing on all cylinders. Can’t get enough of it eh? So let me put you straight on something. In none of my posts have I ever mentioned a virtue of the Coalition at state or federal level. Like you, I can’t see one - except in the exceptional circumstance where a monstrous perversion by Labor needs to be corrected. In my opinion, some monstrous perversions cannot be measured relative to what the other party, the alternative party, is or would be doing. In 2007, I thought (and believed that many Liberals thought) that it was time for Howard to go - not so much because Rudd was a better option (I knew we’d soon tire of him) but simply that by any measure Howard was past his time. I’ve never, ever voted Liberal and most Liberals couldn’t bring themselves to do the dirty work but obviously some Liberal voters thought that it was a mature and responsible thing to do to bring down that government so that the whole show could get itself back into some order. I can’t fault that judgement on the part of those normally-Liberal voters. Sure, many voted for a Green or an Independent but at the bottom of the paper they preferenced Labor ahead of the Coalition. Those single person voters did the dirty work that Abbott, Costello, Ruddock, Downer and Co. couldn’t bring themselves to do.
I think the same problem exists in NSW state Labor. I believe it is almost irrelevant what an alternative (Liberal/National) government there would do - even if they outlined some policy, which I gather they haven’t. The Labor caravan is like some carbuncle that everyone knows needs to be lanced. But Party-loyalty-obsessed Laborites can’t get over the terrible quandary they face. What if Sussex Street finds out they ratted on the party? Well if you can’t do it, you’re no better than Abbott and Downer. Those Liberals had a job to do, they squibbed it and made the real electorate do it for (and to) them. Back then (2007) it wasn’t Laborites who won the election for Labor it was Liberal voters who turned on their out-of-time dysfunctional leadership and simply jumped ship. They’ll be back on board when the Libs get shipshape again - which can’t come soon enough in the eyes of some of the jumpers.
@POWERISNOTSTRENGTH - So, surprise, surprise! You’re an apologist/promoter for the Liberal Party? Now why doesn’t that surprise me. Why didn’t you admit to it in the first place? [Moderator- this comment has been edited. Play nice, please!]
I don’t like the conservatives? OK? Not a bit! Apart from racists, or god botherers or pro nuclear etc I put the conservatives last. They’ve done nought in 45 yrs to make me change my mind! OK? How long have you been a voter?
As for having a go at Elan re his comments. If you want to read something scary, go check out the Anti-Terror Legislation of 2005? I believe. If you’re worried about the ‘nanny state’ and scary intervention of govts etc. Have a read! It’s still in operation! It’s almost ‘open slather’ on any individual, group etc - under Howard it was anyway! Take Dr Haneef as an example!
There’s no need for a filter, if parents exercise their responsibilities and take care of their own kids. The filter would probably be ‘hacked’ anyway, by some 16 yr old after a short time. Didn’t a young bloke in that age bracket ‘hack’ the filter the Libs had as a trial - made them all look like fools.
@HUGH - You still don’t get it either do you? I’m hoping that enough people will say, ‘pox on both your houses’ and vote for The Greens - enough votes, more Greens. What part of that is hard to understand. You also omit to acknowledge, that you could’ve said this about 4-5 posts ago, but you preferred to use your words for vitriol and attack. You don’t use that ‘tone’ with blokes! You still can’t help your paternalistic and patronising ‘air’? Just comes easily to some blokes! I think this NSW govt is beyond a joke! Doesn’t mean I must vote for the Libs? Even if I could just vote above the line for the Greens, I don’t have any say in where their preferences will go. A lot is out of my hands, and that’s why I’d like the mode of voting to change - to optional preferential, or optional proportional! When there’s the political will to do that, we might sort out the Constitution too, or better still, rewrite it!
FER GAWD’S SAKES!!!!
When are you two asinine little twerps going to cut the crap?!?
Play the ball not the man? Yeah right Crikey!
For crying out loud Mucrawl/Pis,-this is OCD!
If you aren’t going for LIZ you’re going for me!
Put a sock in it you w-ankers!
PIS (very apt): Get it into your head, you monosyllabic Neanderthal- your opinion counts for bugger all with me. You know and I know that all you are trying to do is simply pick a fight-and not even a credible one!
If I say black you will insist on white. Jeez!
Why don’t you and Mucrawl swing back to a high tree and satisfy yourself by banging on your puny chests and yodelling!
YOU ARE HAVING NO INFLUENCE……….haven’t you got that yet?? You have the intelligence of an amoeba FFS!
(Well mods?? Come on-this dog with bone thing with these two IS obsessive. Don’t blame either of us for getting just a wee tad irked. Enough already!).
No disrespect to anyone, but why do I feel as if I am in a multi-tunnelled hurricane?
Note Not hurry cane as the Americans would have us pronounce it.
I will never tick the box that says ‘email me when someone posts a response’ (or whatever it is) ever again.
*sigh* Haven’t you all got cups of tea to make?
Sad. Very sad. If Pat is not Irish, then we have two female posters, (NO Venise, this isn’t the feminist thing!).
Yet: what is bloody glaring is that two of us have to be pursued and talked down to incessantly.
It is sticking out like an organ stop!!
What is the crime ladies? Two females have the gall to stand up to it? Not why they are having to do that? Em?
It is so blatant, I have finally become VERY succinct in my opinion of it.
So it’s hurricanes and cup of tea. Hugely disappointing.
Perhaps there is a case for feminists Venise? (I’m not one btw)
Try triple spacing your lines, Elan. Louder that way. And try making your insults REALLY BIG
Thank you Liz, you have asked a question which I can answer directly and without ambiguity. I understand completely your argument that if enough people vote for the Greens then a Green will be elected and the major parties will no longer be involved.
I too will vote for the Greens. But I know that in my federal electorate (lower house), even if the Greens poll 25% (easily more than double the present expectation) they will still not get elected in this seat. Through a redistribution the currently Liberal-held seat is said to be line-ball marginal. It could go either way but my view is that Labor didn’t need the seat in 2007 and certainly don’t deserve it now. The ALP National Executive has steamrolled local branches and installed a Rudd-endorsed, AWU-backed candidate. There’s not a lot of Labor love going around - does that sound unusual?
So here’s one for you. You have referred to voting in the upper house and I’ve been writing about voting for the lower house but as a generalisation why would you vote for the Greens ‘above the line’ as you say, when you cannot control the distribution of preferences? This is the one part of the voting procedure where an individual voter can exercise complete control. Why relinquish that control? You don’t have to, you can specify on the ballot paper exactly where each of your preferences (not theirs) go. I don’t understand your logic. I’m not criticising you or patronising you, I genuinely do not understand why, when you have complete freedom inside the polling booth to do whatever you want, you take the view that “a lot is out of my hands, and that’s why I’d like the mode of voting to change”?
Shut up PIS. It is not an insult if it’s directed at you. It’s a character reference.
ELAN: No, no. I’m not a feminist, but I do have huge sympathy for Liz, and huge respect.
I used to be a feminist, but with the exception of Liz-and as I discovered when I entered a comment, which was about home-birthing, written by Bernard K-against the subsidising of midwives. All hell broke out, and the dissenters faced the wrath of the bull-dikes. A nurse wrote in saying she and her fellow nurses were sick of pregnant ladies, together with their babies who were stuck in the birth canal, being brought in to hospital half dead, and having to save both lives.
I feared for her life such was the shit shovelled at her. The movement has been taken over by the Fascists, and the Politically Correct. There was even a link to an extraordinarily plain woman, tunelessly singing and plunking at a guitar, an ode to Niccola Roxon, Health Minister, about home-birthing. CRINGE.
Political Correctness has done more harm to Oz than anything else-apart from introducing an internet filter. Once we were rugged individualists, now we are ragged marshmallows who’ve allowed, nay surrendered, all our hard-won rights to the Moral Minority. We have handed them our country, on toast.
Now I’ve gone right off the topic. Sorry about that LukeB.
Sorry folks
Never, in my whole life, have I encountered such pious, self-aggrandising, po-faced, lying, wolverine, self-satisfied vultures. They wanted to get the moronic taxpayers (us) to subsidise mid-wives, because no one in the insurance business would underwrite an enterprise so weighted against the the chances of survival of the women and babies involved.
My only joy was when the government turned down these harpies.
@HUGH - This is what I said on Sunday, July 11
Liz-“Labor will only be assured of getting my vote if not enough people put The Greens first. If enough people vote for The Greens candidate, my preferences won’t go to anyone - they woon’t be required?” I thought that I’d made my position clear enough days ago.
I don’t believe that I said anything about voting “above the line” and not having control over my preferences - I’m pretty sure I said the opposite. That I vote BELOW the line (in the Senate) in order to HAVE CONTROL over my preferences! I also said that I check my numbers back and forth in order to make sure that my vote is not invalid?
In the House of Reps, you have to number every square - that’s my point. You MUST delegate preferences. If it WAS POSSIBLE to just nominate your candidate of choice, and it was optional, the Party would probably have an agreement with another/s as to preferences, usually the major parties. As I definitely do NOT want a Coalition govt, then I put the Lib (in my case) last! Simple! I don’t know why you’re confused. I do know the difference between voting for both Houses, and follow the rules, even though I question whether they accurately portray the voter’s wishes! The election of Steve Fielding is a good example of this. I don’t want a ‘steve fielding’ situation in NSW!
Why did it take you 4? 5? posts to even admit that you’ve been patronising etc? Jeez!
Righty ho Venise.
I must have missed that topic. I had a home birth many moons ago. No big deal.
All these bubbies stuck in birth canals sounds suspiciously like BCBS (Birth Canal Blockage Syndrome)- the curse of the 21st century..
“Never, in my whole life, have I encountered such pious, self-aggrandising, po-faced, lying, wolverine, self-satisfied vultures.”
Geez! you’ve had a sheltered life kiddo!
This is part of human evolution. We came out of the swamp-got up on our rear legs-and turned into complete bastards.
Well;-all except me. And you will say the same,-and ‘they’ will say the same.
The same with Moral Minorities and the Politically Correct. It’s them -not us that do that.
Sorry young Jedi Knight.
@VENISE@ELAN - Isn’t the relevance here, that Conroy could just ‘filter out’ any website that even discussed home births? Tie in public ‘concerns’ conveniently to Govt ‘policy’? What could be next? Same sex marriage ‘sites’, euthanasia sites etc etc? Scary isn’t it? I thought the real issue with anything, including home births is about choice? Apparently not! (No, I’m not going off topic - OK?)
Incidently, the Prime Minister of Iceland, is the first female world leader who is gay - she and her partner recently got married, and the sun is shining here today - probably has been in Iceland too?All the kiddies are apparently safe and sound also?
I’m waiting for the day when a federal govt introduces policies that are in line with public opinion; like a woman’s right to choose, euthanasia, gay marriage and no internet censorship, to name just a few! Sigh!
Liz, 13 July at 6.12pm you wrote: “Even if I could just vote above the line for the Greens, I don’t have any say in where their preferences will go.”
LIX @ELAN: Back in about an hour.
LIZ sorry about that.
@HUGH - So? I said “Even if I could”? Hypothetical? Perhaps I could’ve put it in different terms. The whole point was emphasizing the system of voting after you castigated me for being a Labor voter regardless? Even after I’d said I don’t know how many times, that Labor hasn’t gained my first preference in all tiers of govt since about 1984! Not good enough for you. You had to still carry on and accuse me, more or less, of being a mindless idiot, who voted like a robot! I was trying to tell you that the system of voting has too much to do with election outcomes. If you’d bothered to read what I said, you’d have got a clear message re how responsibly I take voting, and how I also designate where, or to whom, my preferences go, WHERE POSSIBLE!
@HUGH - this is what you said a few days ago! “powerisnotstrength, originally you could have chosen a different example such as: “As a dog returns to its vomit, so a fool repeats his foolishness.” It’s biblical (Proverbs 26:11 I think), it’s eyecatching and it’s apt - especially for Labor voters who just can’t stop going back to the steaming pile despite a stick-in-the-throat texture.”
You later on went on to assert, that you didn’t participate in any ‘personal attack’ and I was the one at fault for deviating from the path of the topic, which I hasten to point out, that your last comments have nought to do with the topic also - nor have any of your comments for at least a day or two! Being obsessed with the nitty gritty of my voting methods has nought to do with Conroy’s filter! Talk about the pot ………,,,,Exhausting!
Liz, I’ll quote you. “I’m pretty sure I said the opposite”. But you didn’t say the opposite did you? You, being one that checks and re-checks the numbers are satisfied that this explanation is good enough for you so it is good enough for me too. I’m obviously wrong. I won’t be returning to the vomit, no way. This hog is staying in the muck, not bathing in the clear waters, not passing GO, not collecting the $200. I slap myself for presuming that a biblical quote would cut the mustard. I was wrong about that. I am at fault. Pure white snow is falling on a blackened, tarnished pot. But the sky is clear and the sun is still shining… it’s a miracle!
@HUGH - There’d be no point in my saying/meaning the opposite. I’ve alluded to voting sufficient times for anyone to grasp what I meant. And, if you’re such a smarty, you’d have known, or assumed, that everytime you vote above the line in the House of Reps, or the equivalent in the State, if you don’t number every square, your vote is informal. If you couldn’t follow the thread of what I was saying, don’t blame me! Perhaps you were too busy thinking up smart alec quotes from the bible to demean, rather than follow my thread!
The Universal How-to-Vote Card for anybody:
1. Write number 1 for the candidate you like best
2. Write the last number for the one you hate the worst
3. Write the second last number for the most likely favourite (if not already covered by the first two steps)
3. Enter the remaining numbers in any squares, it doesn’t matter which
The fourth step is of course, step 4 not 3.
ELAN: There is a case in process at the moment in Adelaide, I think, where a baby was born dead. I’m not sure of the details but there is an investigation by the Coroner as to why the mother, who had a record of infant death-something like that, but chose to go to a midwife instead.
It is because of the record of unfortunate results of home-birthing, and the odds against a successful delivery, that the insurance companies wouldn’t insure midwives, nor will they insure patients who decide to go ahead with home-births.
Nothing daunted, the high priestess of home birthing-Google ‘The Memes of Production’-I’d give you the name but Crikey would object, I’ll give you a hint. The name is Scandinavian-that the head of the movement approached the Health Minister, Niccola Roxon, to subsidise home-births.
To her eternal credit, Ms Roxon said No! Hopefully, a lot of women may cease worshipping their own bodies, as if they had reinvented the wheel, and as if they were the first woman to ever get pregnant; and get themselves safely to professional health carers. You know, those funny people who have spent years of their lives in order that they may save the lives of other people.
I’m glad you had a safe delivery, but from the ease with which you say “No big deal” I would guess that you are as healthy as hell. Which is terrific. However, there a lot of mentally constipated and physically delicate female fools out there who assume that home-birthing is another form of religion.
Anyway, I’ve gotta go and I’ll read you tomorrow.
Ciao baby
LIZ: Did you say you were in Iceland? I’ll bet it’s cold. Yes, it’s Summer, but I was in Punta Arenas (almost as far South as one can go) in Summer. I was wearing tights, thick trousers, hiking boots. two skivvies, two jumpers, a silk Balaclava and a woollen one, and a very thick Parka, sun glasses and a camera.
Anyway, of course you are right. I thought I’d made the point that Steve Conroy can do exactly that. Ban internet information re birth-control (he is a conser-vative Catholic-his words) euthanasia information. (already banned) And anything else a good catholic may take exception to, in his bid for total power by installing an internet filter.
Which is the reason I introduced in one of my comments, the man who is a leading member of some branch of the fundamentalist Catholic church-a sort of sub-plot, as it were.
He is outraged because the Senator is going to ban his website where he shows ground-up bones, and mutilated foetuses-gory and hideous stuff-to send these photos to women who might have thought about having an abortion. Not to mention any parliamentarian who goes along with allowing women to have an abortion.
I mean, whose fucking bodies are they? You know, those people who make up over fifty percent of the population? They are called women. Right?
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
LIZ: Did you say you were in Iceland? I’ll bet it’s cold. Yes, it’s Summer, but I was in Punta Arenas (almost as far South as one can go) in Summer. I was wearing tights, thick trousers, hiking boots. two skivvies, two jumpers, a silk Balaclava and a woollen one, and a very thick Parka, sun glasses and a camera.
Anyway, of course you are right. I thought I’d made the point that Steve Conroy can do exactly that. Ban internet information re birth-control (he is a conser-vative Catholic-his words) euthanasia information. (already banned) And anything else a good catholic may take exception to, in his bid for total power by installing an internet filter.
Which is the reason I introduced in one of my comments, the man who is a leading member of some branch of the fundamentalist Catholic church-a sort of sub-plot, as it were.
He is outraged because the Senator is going to ban his website where he shows ground-up bones, and mutilated foetuses-gory and hideous stuff-to send these photos to women who might have thought about having an abortion. Not to mention any parliamentarian who goes along with allowing women to have an abortion.
I mean, whose effing bodies are they? You know, those people who make up over fifty percent of the population? They are called women. Right?
Which is the reason I re-printed it and deleted the ‘f’ word.
Mmmmmmmmmmm…, I admit, that is my count to ten.
High Priestess eh?
We are going to disagree strongly on this,-but here I have no problem at all saying that this is not applicable to this topic, so I won’t go further.
” I mean, whose effing bodies are they? You know, those people who make up over fifty percent of the population? They are called women. Right? “
In your very next post you put this.
I agree.
@VENUS@ELAN - Actually, women now make up 52% of the population? Not that it’s doing us much good! God, the energy it takes confronting these blokes with the ingrained views they’ve had since the cradle. Perhaps we have to wait until x number of generations of men leave the planet, for there to be change. Sadly, I won’t be here to see it!
I haven’t been to Iceland. Haven’t been out of the country really - haven’t had the money to do it!
The home birth question - briefly! My last baby gave me some grief. I had pre-eclampsia, and spent the last 6-8wks in and out of bed. There was no way I was going to take any risks with his life. In fact, the paramedic jokingly wanted to offload me at a closer hospital, but I said, no way - any problems I want to be where he can be cared for - instantly if necessary. I didn’t realise until years later how dangerous it was for me also - or him either! I just had a gut feeling! He was born 5 minutes after I entered the hospital - another manifestation of pre-eclampsia, so I was told! He was fine, thankfully! I can’t understand anyone taking any risk with their baby. Adults can please themselves, but a baby relies on us to make informed and adult decisions. What if I’d opted for a home birth, and he was born that quickly but then had difficulties and died! Then, I would be a basket case! Their father was a tall man with a large frame - my boys weren’t that heavy, but they had large heads and frames! That gas and/or pethidine was good, not perfect, but helpful!
Having said that, I believe that the hospital system re birthing could improve its service. Some women have bad experiences for a variety of reasons, but those involved in policies and procedures etc should listen to what women need, and work on it. I totally reject the unnecessary involvement of obstetricians etc - pregnancy is a natural function, we’re not sick! My pet hate is the common saying, ‘the doctor delivered the baby’? What? I did it! God, the one thing I’ve achieved that nobody else could do, and some bloke/woman takes the kudos for it! No way! In fact, there was only a doctor there for one - out of three! It could be argued re casaerian, but otherwise, no way!
Wow!things in the 60’s were awful - there’s been so much improvement in the last 40+ years. We were treated as though we were sick, stupid, idiots, basket cases(if something was wrong and we shed tears etc) bullied, denied seeing our other kids while in hospital, and Matrons behaved as though they got their training from Hitler! We weren’t even allowed out of bed during visiting hours! Why didn’t we just tell her to get stuffed? Amazing isn’t it? Things are much better now, but there’s always room for improvement.
LIZ: Sorry, I thought you said something re Iceland and used the word ‘here’. Trust me.
I’m glad you agree with me re the home birthing racket. In the rush to be one of the few so many women end up becoming ‘one of the many’ who meet with misfortune.
Also, WTF did all those people who are health carers, spend years learning their various professions? Just to have some lumpen-pate female fascist telling their acolytes “Don’t use Doctors!”
I despair.
@VENISE - True! 90 women out of 100 might be fine giving birth without a knowledgeable person around, but what about those 10? If women have an OK pregnancy, no problems, like overweight or pre-ecclampsi or gestation diabetes or ???OK? But, why take the risk - after 9 months? I don’t understand it really. I didn’t enjoy hospital, and with my first one I had a miserable time. I was 18 and didn’t see my baby for 30 hrs after he was born. I was convinced he was dead or dying, and nobody would tell me what was going on. I eventually got to see him - after I burst into tears and asked why they hadn’t told me he was dead. It was awful - there was one nurse who was a cruel, vicious person, who made my life hell - but at least he was OK and I was going home - eventually! But it didn’t make me want to take a risk with my next baby’s life!
I think in the UK there are more women who have their babies at home - but maybe that was years ago. A century ago, women had their babies at home, but how many died? And how many babies died? I think they should campaign to change the environment or attitudes or whatever in the hospitals; that would be a positive activity. Women can go home within 24 hrs after giving birth these days - mind you, I think it’s too early, particularly with a first baby, but, maybe I’m wrong. I think it would be best to get the feeding underway, preferably breast feeding etc, and make sure the woman isn’t at risk of postnatal depression or haemorrage or???
I wonder how some of these women would react if they took a ‘trip’ in a time capsule, and went back to the 60’s? They’d be shocked out of their heads! These days, birthing units, partners present, have your baby standing on your head if that’s going to work, these days - 110% better! Mind you, I think there’s too many C sections these days! Some are probably life saving, but too many out of convenience, or ????
Been busy all day! Take care!
“I’m glad you agree with me re the home birthing racket. In the rush to be one of the few so many women end up becoming ‘one of the many’ who meet with misfortune.
Also, WTF did all those people who are health carers, spend years learning their various professions? Just to have some lumpen-pate female fascist telling their acolytes “Don’t use Doctors!” “
Your terminology disgusts me! It is an appalling put down of those who don’t hold your views!
God! How you despise females that don’t meet your requirements!!!!
‘Lumpen-pate female fascist’.
Acolyte? ……..
Try that on me,-and I’ll turn this topic on its bloody head!
You are really trying my damn patience!
How in the hell did you get to this?: Conroy might filter home birthing sites?
Is your anti-censorship perhaps selective?? THAT would be OK?
Well, I tell ya!
Here is my rarest accolade. My crawling compliment to Crikey!
We are told in the most gentle and friendly manner to get back on track. Moderation when it occurs on Crikey is at times quirky (sorry guys!),-but never done with threats.
That is why this place is unique.
I put up a post that says I will go off topic with a vengeance-it is up for moderation-it is put up in its entirety!
I have damn good reason for appreciating a site that very obviously leans to the Left,-yet has a fair whack of conservatives (who of course get a belting!), but they know damn well that what they say will go up on the forum, and they hold their own very well!
I have great respect for writers (ex.one..) who often take a strafing, yet critical posts do not ‘disappear’ . There are no threats of suspension.
They are comfortable with the bricks and flowers.
Sod it all! We can even use some terminology of the type that ricochets of the tonsils!
That is unique. It’s unique I tell yer.
I know.
___________________
There you go! My apple for the teacher.
Enjoy!
ELAN: This is just a personal reflection. Writing without blemish is desperately hard, if for no other reason that to sound authentic, it should come from the heart.
What happens when the heart gets involved? We use every word, of our lifetime’s experiences, and in so doing, we lurch ever closer to the edge of the precipice of the prevailing moral code at the time.
With the world positively rushing to embrace all forms of right-wing dikat, and with our technical prowess to access information beyond previous generations’ wildest dreams, we have the paradoxical situation of having ever less freedom of expression.
Perhaps it is best seen in the medium of cinema. The Americans have the technology to produce technically mind-boggling Movies. Which, to me are beyond watching for their sheer boredom.
At the same time their censors allow them to use the ‘F’ word. Thus, on a bad day, their will be entertainment for thirteen year old children, liberally splattered with ‘F’ words. Zero content+meaningless ‘F’ words=Something few people will want to watch, because the ‘F’ words are thrown in gratuitously. And thirteen year olds are not noted for their ability to concentrate. Yet another immortal clunker hits the deck.
Just as the land of Oz was about to mature culturally, we have a bovine clod; a self-styled Conservative Catholic, who has given the most sensitive portfolio of all. The minister for public morals. (All on the basis that Fielding’s mother had a bit part in the production of movies, or was it TV programs?)
Thus does history repeat itself, cultural flowering to be held in thrall by the mediocre morality of Senator Fielding. Thus does he join a gilt-edged trio Savanorola, Torquemada, Steve Fielding.
One thing one can say about Catholics, they run true to form.
Been given, para 6.
Strewth V, you don ‘arf write some flowery stuff!!
Your point is taken though.
ELAN: When I get depressed I become flowery. Sorry about that.
@VENISE - Not over the election being called, I hope? I’d like to go to sleep for 5 weeks, and wake up on polling day - in the morning????
@LIZ: No, not over it. I was sitting here, feeling depressed, and thinking about it. And the “Move forward”, “Moving forward” Slogan, and asking myself. HTF a political Party which has a Savanorola in the vital, Broadband, Communications, and the Digital Economy-I refer to the lovely Senator Steve Conroy?
This, in the age in which we live, it is arguably the most important Portfolio in the entire Government. I ask you, where does all our information come from? We have at our fingertips, information which the thinkers in the Renaissance would have killed for.
And what does the Government do with it? In places it in the hands of someone who thinks the Gum-nut fairies are a bit nude.
And for those people who vote for the Coalition Parties, we have Tony Abbott, the Jesuit-trained Catholic as head of the Liberal Party. Together with another rabid Catholic, Barnaby Joyce, as head of the National Party, both men-naturally-are anti-choice and anti-euthanasia, and anti-women.
This is the year two thousand and twenty, and religion is the last vestige of our primeval fears and superstitions. Superstition with a halo is what religion is. Yet this power-hungry trio is holding back all our potential growth for our cultural future, in the name of a man-made God!
Nor should I leave out the Muslim God and their followers, although thus far Oz has been relatively free of Muslim parliamentarians.
Yes, I know I’m going to vote for the Greens, but I have to work out my prefs too.
Enough of my gloom. No wonder we are a third-rte people!
‘Bye.
LIZ, sorry. The first para, I left out some of it. Is asking how can we move forward when we’re facing backward?
@VENISE - I know exactly how you feel. I’d really like to just keep out of the whole mess for the next 5 weeks, but I know that I’d probably go mad - either way! Every time I hear Abbott say how bad Labor has been, be it health or ??I yell and say, ‘what damned cheek’? You lot had almost 12 years - if you did such a good job - 3 yrs wouldn’t have ‘unravelled it’? I think that’s going to be my main theme. And then there’s the god botherers who really get right up my nose. I heard a woman on radio this morning say she’s not voting for Julia Gillard, because she’s an atheist! And I think that’s the main positive she’s got going for her????Ho hum!
The ‘sloganeering’? I know I’ll get sick of that too. Who gives them these ideas I wonder? Do they live in a plastic bubble or something? I really resent the media setting the agenda. Guess what? On Thursday, we’ll be able to watch ABC News 24 hours a day! I hope they lift their game! I’m getting sick of the lot of them.
I’m voting for The Greens in my local electorate, and putting the Libs last, as I went to out the Liberal Member. She’s OK on a womans ‘right to choose’ etc, but not on IR or asylum seekers or ????the rest! The Greens candidate is a good bloke, and so I may even break my ‘fast’ re helping on polling day - depends how the bloody arms are! I could drive around and take some sandwiches or offer to relieve, so people can have a break or something. I’ll see how I feel when it gets closer. I haven’t helped on polling day since 1983?
I’m also sick of Abbott’s nonsense re Kevin Rudd - what hypocrisy! We don’t elect the PM, we elect individual members of Parlt. They’ve had 4 leaders in less then 4 yrs, and their antics are just as ruthless. In one day, he said that Kevin Rudd had been “assassinated” and “executed”? And no journalist took him to task. Fancy that!
I’ve just taken another look at the title of this discussion paper! Quite amusing really! Make us pure, but not yet! I didn’t think that was the aim - I thought it was about protecting kids - or that’s their stated reason/s? As I said before - ho hum!
I’m ‘girding my loins’ for the 7PM news. If it really gives me the, you know whats, I’ll just go back to playing CD’s!
Take care!