Trying to avoid the government you deserve? The Age pontificates & joins the push for a gender biassed storming of the Bastille.

Some of us - well, an awful lot of us - are well and truly over the political storms beaten up by the Mainstream Media (MSM).  Some of us want to hear strong and civil political debate and discourse.  Some of us are not into bigotry and political inanity.  Some of us don't respond like puppets at the end of a MSM string, ready to be jerked into movement and predictability.  Some of us are sentient beings who use our sensory faculties to come to our own decisions based on reasoning and the ambitions we have for ourselves and our nation.  Some of us are never polled about anything, Some of us can be the big surprise on election day.

That paragraph is a response that, to-day - Saturday 22 June 2013 - The Editor of The Age, the Fairfax daily in Melbourne, Australia has decided to tell us, the Australian body politic, how to vote in the forthcoming election.

The less senior journalists of the MSM have been baying breathlessly on the Prime Ministerial leadership and associated political polling for months now.  Well, it has probably been years - ever since the hung Parliament came into being in 2010 in the Year of Our Lord.  Not the first hung parliament in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia - but you could be forgiven for thinking so because of the five-minute memories and lack of research skills held by most of the current crop of journalists.  Fact checking and penetrating questioning seem to have been consigned to a by-gone era.

Our political discourse has become highly uncivil and filled with bigotry, gender bias, and hatred.  Perhaps a poll or some form of research that could attempt to co-relate physical violence in the wider community with the violent and hate-filled language spewing forth from the anti-Gillard camp might prove insightful.

It seems that a large proportion of our journalists have become "inept stenographers" producing "tainted journalism".

It seems to me that one could look at The Age and its political interference to-day as a last ditch attempt to influence the electorate.  Perhaps the powers-that-be at Fairfax (Roger Corbett, Gina Rinehart and their allies) feel that enough has not been done by their journalists (and remember there are few of the good ones left at Fairfax these days) to influence the electorate to rid itself of Julia Gillard, to insist on the overturn of Australia's first female Prime Minister.  

I would suggest to the Fairfax mob baying at the barricades to look around them; look at the company they are keeping.  The Fairfax language might be polite and civil but are they lining themselves up with the following: Alan Jones; Howard Sattler, Barnaby Joyce, plus a whole tribe of hate-filled men and the women who are their acolytes?

The Fairfax language may be polite.  The newspaper might have a liberal tradition.  All this counts for nought because one thing is clear, clear as crystal.  Fairfax have aligned themselves with the forces who want, who seek the downfall of Australia's first female Prime Minister.  They cannot wait for a September election to allow the Australian electorate to decide.  No - this is a gender biassed storming of the Bastille.  And there is one thing more that is not being considered.  If an Abbott Government trounces Labor so convincingly that it is all but invisible; if Abbott takes control of both Houses of Parliament with a huge majority, it will merely prove two things: 

• Australians will have the government for which they have voted
• Australia will have the government it deserves

While the Labor Government is going to this election with a raft of good policies and a history of sound management in the hung Parliament period, there have been dastardly deeds done. The continuation of the Northern Territory Intervention; the continuation of taxpayer funding to some of Australia's wealthiest schools while poorer state schools continue to suffer are two that spring readily to mind.

You see, naive as it may seem, I am a great believer in natural justice; that we reap what we sow.  All parties   (and I do include The Greens, to a lesser extent, in what I am saying) have sown their own crops of weeds which are yet to be harvested.  The harvest cannot be avoided.  It may be circumvented for a time, it may be postponed, but there will be a harvest from which our political parties and the Australian voters cannot run.

See also
Victoria Rollison in The Australian Independent Media Network
Kieran Fitzgerald gives it to the Editor of The Age in the same fashion that The Age has given it Julia
The Conscience Vote - For the sake of the nation, the media should do its job - and please take the time to read the comments to this article.  Some good discussion going on there.

The Network singles out special ones from the Australia Day Honours List

To-day, January 26, is Australia Day - Australia's national day of celebration (that's the settler attitude) or the day to mark survival (that's the Aboriginal point of view).  The Governor-General publishes a list of Australian honours.  It is my Australia Day ritual to peruse the lists nodding in agreement with some (not a lot) and making snarky remarks to myself about others (quite a few).  The snarky remarks go along the lines of  - well, he/she has got it for a job in which they were well remunerated; so-and-so got this level of honour while so-and-so did similar activities and only got a lower level of honour.  

One thing is always clear to me, though, and that is that Honours Lists are status-ridden.  The highest level honours are few, seldom given to women or at least not more than one woman per list, and it is clear that one has to have reached a certain position - usually based on economic position - to be in the running.  Although it is possible to work your way up from one level to another.  This is noted in the lists with the biographies clearly delineating what the recipient has done since his/her last and lower honour.  

For you, dear Networkers, I have singled out a few which are a great fit for the ethos of The Network.  I have excerpted their listings and have placed them in the document below so you can read them in greater detail.  Those that capture my attention are as follows:

• David Rhett BUTLER - Firstly, don't you love the name, Rhett Butler. At least one parent must have loved Gone with the Wind.  And, did he marry someone called Vivian and have a daughter called Scarlett?  That's not why he made The Network Honours List.  No.  It is because he is the chair and founder of Skyjuice Foundation. As Networkers realise, water is a major priority on The Network and so I regard this not only as a gong  for David Butler but for water as well.
• Bryan Andrew KEON-COHEN QC.  Networkers will realise that the First Nations have the highest priority on The Network.  This blog is concerned for recognition and relationships with the First Peoples of all parts of the globe.  This, however, is an Australian blog and The Network's primary concern is with the First Nations of Australia.  Bryan Keon-Cohen's work for which he is honoured makes it perfectly clear that his priority is the same as The Network's priority.
• Jon Stephenson - like myself an old Townvillean - has gone from the midst of us.  Please note, Networkers.  If you wish to nominate someone, please don't wait until they are on their last legs.  Jon's achievements are amazing.  For my money this man should have been nominated years before and received no less than our highest honour.  Neither of these things have occurred.  This man's achievements are many and unique.  We ought to be reading about him in schools and libraries across the country.  Is there a Hall of Fame somewhere for Jon Stephenson?
• Lyn Pengilly of Parkes and Helen Poulos of Bondi Junction touch my heart strings.  The Network emphasises and tries to live and breathe community and communitarianism.  Lyn and Helen display this in their daily lives and have been honoured for it - one in regional Australia, the other in the very centre of Australia's major city.  They are unpaid.  They have done the most basic of volunteer jobs.  Without Lyn and Helen and people like them across this nation and across the world our human community would be poverty stricken in mind, body, and spirit.  They have turned their hands to what needs doing.  They have provided the grease for the wheels of their communities.  

Read more about these wonderful people here:

IN DEFENCE OF THE DISTINGUISHED HAZEL HAWKE : IN SPITE OF A LESS THAN DISTINGUISHED EX PRIME MINISTER AND HIS SECOND WIFE

Patricia Edgar has to-day published a spirited defence of the much loved and respected Hazel Hawke's role as Bob Hawke's Prime Ministerial spouse.

It is unlikely that  Hazel is aware of the storm breaking around the publication of Blanche d'Alpuget's latest Bob Hawke tribute/hagiography - but her children are.

What dignity is there, I would ask Bob Hawke, in allowing your second wife supported by yourself to try to airbrush Hazel's role out of the nation's history.  Is there only room for yourself - and your non-Prime Ministerial spouse?

I believe that there have been many elements (this is one) of Bob Hawke's post-Prime Ministerial life which have been lacking in dignity.  This could well be another to be added to the list.

Thank you, Patricia Edgar.  I trust that many will be lining up behind you to publicly articulate Hazel's contribution to the Australian nation.