Refugees 86. Accepts fewer refugees than the UN has asked (and they ask very little) 87. The extremely expensive and innefective Pacific“Solution†88. Worms were recently found in the food served at Baxter detention centre. 89. Locking up children in hell houses. Many refugee kids have suffered major psychological problems as a result. Australians are well off. We are the first world. When people come to us for help, we treat them no better than the regimes they narrowly escape....
What about that loony Deputy PM, John Anderson. He and George Brandis (Liberal Senator) are off the planet. According to Ando, the secularisation of society (meaning accepting all beliefs, not just the Christians) will lead, of necessity to fascism. Meanwhile, also according to Ando, the Greens are a bunch of communists. It’s terribly confusing for my atheist Green friend. He can’t work out if he’s Left or Right. And to make matters worse for him, George Brandis says the Greens movement g...
A close friend of mine who worked the halls of Canberra’s Press Gallery has often told me of the ways in which Howard has prevented the Australian people from knowing about the mistakes he has made, far more so than any of his predecessors. Much of this has gone unreported (perhaps because a fair portion of today’s gallery are Liberal voters). I asked Kezzia to write an article for this blog about her insight into John Howard. BY KEZZIA Let me begin with a disclaimer: I’m not and...
We're halfway through my list of reasons to vote Howard out now. Economy 42. Foreign debt has doubled under Costello. 43. Costello’s great policy solution to the Superannuation Crisis? Australians should all go forth and multiply. What a visionary! 44. Provided tax cuts for everyone....EXCEPT POOR PEOPLE!!! Tax cuts at the last Budget were provided except to those people who actually need it: those unlucky enough to have to survive on less than 52 grand a year. 45. spent millio...
Liberal Party Communication Minister Richard Alston recently lodged a complaint against the Australian Broadcasting Corporation for left wing bias. If you want to read his letter, you can find it at www.abc.net.au/mediawatch. Dicky Alston, the same clown who supported David Flint as the head of the ABA until Flint recently retired in shame. That was after having written love letters to Alan Jones fawning over his broadcasting abilities, whilst he was supposed to be sitting in judgment on ...
I've decided to try my hand at political cartooning. I've been inspired by Bruce Petty, who pointed out that he can't draw, and I thought, well then I can be a political cartoonist. Unfortunately I can't find a way of uploading the images onto this blog, so I've created a LiveJournal, on which I'll place the images. If anyone knows how to get my images up onto JU, I'd really appreciate a step by step guide (I don't really know much about computers). Link
There are a lot of harsh things said on JU about people with little money or no job. People often say it’s because they’re lazy or stupid or other such ideas. The poor are poor because they’re stupid and lazy, is the conservatives’ cry. There are probably some cases where this is the case, but as far as I can see it’s far more complicated than this. There are plenty of fat, rich bastards and lazy members of the middle class. And that is why I believe that Bourdieu’s theory about ‘cultural cap...
I’ve always been obsessed by politics. My blog has long been testament to that. But upon returning from my holiday in Kanaky, I changed the title of my blog and started being all “nice” as FishHead said. I learned something about life when I was in New Caledonia. Before I went I had never been able to understand people who don’t inform themselves about politics. Politics can change your way of life and I think that is so important. I still believe that. But I was shown something more impor...
When Johnny Howard abolished ATSIC and replaced it with a board of coconuts, I expressed scepticism. The Labor Party still maintains the Aboriginal board should be democratically elected. I argued at the time that ATSIC should have been reformed rather than abolished. Let’s have a look at how “practical reconciliation” is going, as it is the issue most dear to my heart. The new board got off to a bad start with the petrol bowser initiative Link . It was quite clearly a case of the coconut...
I don't really have time for a full article at the moment, but something astonishing has happened that I have to comment on: In the past 2 weeks I have agreed with 3 of the most Right wing people in the country on politics. Yes this includes my sworn enemies, John Howard, Andrew Bolt (columnist) and Channel Nine's Sunday programme. So inspired was I by their comments I have written to each of them to tell them what a spelndid job they did. Andrew Bolt's criticisms of Australia's xenophobia...
I grew up a very proud Australian. I learned Aussie slang terms that are becoming obsolete, I deliberately developed a broad Aussie accent and I became one of the very few who knows the 2nd verse to the national anthem. I grew up under the Hawke-Keating Government. Although I’m old enough now to recognise the emptiness of some of their words, it was largely their example that made me proud. They spoke of reconciling our differences, of breaking down the barriers and tensions that exist bet...
I just attended a forum on student unionism. I asked the people there to respond to some criticism I had of compulsory student unionism and I felt they responded rather well. Here, I have tried to summarise some of their points. Why should I pay fees for political protests I don’t agree with? 3% of student union fees are put towards political campaigns. For instance, one recent demonstration outside a minister’s office cost the guild a grand total of $5. It is important that stude...
The other night I spent several hours chatting with 4 refugees. 3 are Afghanistani, 1 is from Eritrea (sort of part of Sudan but not). I would like to tell you about some of the interesting things I remember that these 4 very nice, gentle men told me about their life experiences. Chaman had spent 3 years in a refugee detention centre, enduring 45 degree Celsius days, awaiting the approval of his refugee status. He fled Afghanistan because of the Taliban, who were enforcing a very strict f...
I was just sent a link to an online petition which will be sent to President Bush, urging him to "demand the [UN] Security Council support a larger African Union troop deployment, a general arms embargo and targeted sanctions against those most responsible for the atrocities." Well doesn't that sound familiar, hit too close to home, make you shiver when you think of the way things could go in Sudan. For those of you who are unaware, the Sudanese Government is sanctioning mass killings of i...
Communism is often cited as the Leftist utopia. I don’t know a great deal about communism, having never read Communist Manifesto or anything. But what I do know about it does not seem to me like utopia at all. According to my encyclopaedia, in communism, “all the property of a community is owned by all members and distributed according to the needs of each member”. I disagree with that principle. I think everyone should get the basics of what they need. That is, I believe that everyo...