2013 - The Year of the Conscience Vote; The Age recommends Labor; the spirit of Cronulla comes to Canberra; liberty, justice, equity, compassion, openness.

The Age believes in economic and social progress, in liberty and justice, in equity and compassion, and openness of government. We believe the role of government is to build a strong, fair nation for future generations, and not to pander to sectional interests. It is with these values in mind that we endorse the Labor Party in this important election.

Just wanting to make sure that people did not miss out on seeing this 

from The Age in Melbourne.  

Clearly, the Fairfax Press remains independent considering 

Roger Corbett's display on Lateline a couple of nights ago 

when he spoke, it seemed, directly from

the Liberal politicians' sheet of talking points.

I'm a great believer in natural justice and I believe that we reap what we sow.  Australia is on a tipping point in my view.  We can choose compassion and inclusion or we can demonstrate that we are truly insular and xenophobic and worse.    I believe that leaders of a nation are duty-bound to bring out the best in their people - not to pander and grandstand to bigotry, racism, sexism and greed. To-morrow as individuals we can choose to coalesce around national ideals of decency and a fair go, of honesty and unselfishness.  I know that many who read this will agree with just about everything I have said in this paragraph.  I know there will be some for whom, like me, decisions at this election are fraught.

In case Networkers had not figured it out yet -  I am died-in-the-wool Labor.  I was a member of the ALP for about three decades.  I believe in trade unions - and even in retirement I am still a union member.  My history goes back to the 1970s when I was an activist against the Vietnam War and Apartheid in South Africa. I was the first woman appointed to be an AWU organiser in Northern Australia and only the second woman appointed in AWU history.  I am not a member of the ALP any more and have not been for more than a decade.  I am no longer a member of any political party.  I resigned my ALP membership in the early 2000s because of certain circumstances in my life at the time.  However, if I had not left when I did, I would have soon after because of Kim Beazley and Tampa. In short, I belong to a small - and perhaps invisible - faction: Rusted on Labor that Sometimes Votes Green.

There is no way in the world that I could reward Labor with my No. 1 vote in 2013.  I want to see others mark Labor down for its lack of compassion and its destruction of many Labor values.  I want the ALP to note that there are things that "up with these we shall not put"!!!  So last Friday when I voted early because I will be out of my electorate this week-end, I chose to give my No. 1 to The Greens and my No. 2 to Labor.  (Apologies to Catherine King, Member for Ballarat and Minister for Minister for Regional Australia, Local Government and Territories. Catherine is an excellent local member.) 

As perhaps never before - or at least for a long time - this needs to be The Year of the Conscience Vote.  The LibNats have brought our national conversation into disrepute.  The spirit of Cronulla has come to Canberra - not only in the person of Scott Morrison (what a contrast from Bruce Baird) but in bringing the racism, antagonism, bigotry and xenophobia displayed in the Cronulla riots to our national capital and our national conversation.  Since when did it behove Australia's national leaders to stir up such sentiments - and I haven't even mentioned sexism and misogyny?  Perhaps we'd have to go back to Billy Hughes for that.  

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.

Howard Sattler has form

Jim Reiher posted this on his Facebook site yesterday.

Howard Sattler – a nasty man who has had a radio voice for way too long. 

Consider this material from Joanna Robin (crikey June 14 2013).

Perth shock jock Howard Sattler quizzing the Prime Minister on whether her long-term partner is gay is just the latest in a long list of offensive quips the 6PR drive host has delivered in his 31-year broadcasting career.

In yesterday's interview (for which he has been suspended pending an internal inquiry) Sattler took the opportunity to "test out" a few "myths, rumours, snide jokes and innuendos" by asking the Prime Minister to respond to rumours on the s-xuality of her partner, Tim Mathieson, given that he's a former hairdresser.

Julia Gillard responded: "I don’t think in life one can actually look at a whole profession full of different human beings and say we know something about everyone of those human beings."

That's not a creed that Sattler himself seems to live by. Between 1989 and 1992, Sattler was the subject of 19 individual complaints to the Australian Broadcasting tribunal for comments by himself or his callers relating to Aboriginal people and culture.

On April 4, 1990, Sattler commented on the deaths of three Aboriginal children who had died while Perth police were pursuing a car they had stolen, declaring: "Well, I say good riddance to bad rubbish. That's three less car thieves. I think, they're dead, and I think that's good."

The comments sparked protests and much public outrage. Sattler was found to have contravened the rules of the Australian Journalists Association; however, the finding was later overturned.

The 6PR star was then heavily involved in orchestrating the 1991 protest Rally for Justice, which was designed to put pressure on the government to introduce harsher penalties for juvenile offenders. Sattler ran a strong campaign on a local "crime wave", predominantly Aboriginal crime, however crime statistics show there had been no increase in crime. Effectively, the protest gathered a lynch mob on the steps of the Western Australian state Parliament.

Sattler said himself in Demons at Drivetime, a 1995 documentary on the country's top drive-time hosts:

"When I went up there and saw a sea of people, must have been 30,000 people, surrounding Parliament House, I felt fairly uneasy, I've got to tell you. All of a sudden I realise what a position I'd been placed in. These people came here because largely I told them to, or asked them, implored them to go there. And now, to a degree, I had them in my hands and I could say things to them and they may do things that they would regret and I would regret later."

The shock jock also became embroiled in the 1999 cash-for-comment saga involving radio broadcasters Alan Jones and John Laws -- although not to the extent of that duo. Sattler had sponsorship deals with Optus, Qantas, Rams and Mitsubishi, and the Australian Broadcasting Authority found that 6PR breached the industry codes of practice 17 times.

In October 2009, Media Watch devoted a segment to examining Sattler’s on-air claim that refugees were ripping off our welfare system. Sattler lashed out: "They've got a cast of thousands putting that together -- disaffected journalists -- people who have just got a gripe on the world, who wouldn't make it in the real world of media."

Not like Sattler, of course, who noted in a 2011 interview given to mark his 30 years in radio that people often called him a racist in the street."You get tagged because you ask questions about Muslims, burqas and that sort of thing," he said. "You can tip-toe through the tulips if you like, but I think you've got to confront these things."

But to give him credit where it's due, Sattler spoke with Sunrise in May to offer his take on the Gillard-Vegemite-sandwich incident and conceded that people shouldn't actually throw things at the Prime Minister.

In his profile on 6PR’s website states that his most embarrassing on air moment was "interviewing actress Bette Davis, who disagreed with every statement I made about her".

Looks as though he has a few to choose from.

Religion and Empire : Jesus and Catholicism - Pell and Hart

George Cardinal Pell gave evidence at the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry Into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations.  This followed close on the heels of the appearance last week before the Inquiry of the Catholic Archbishop of Melbourne, Denis Hart.  Denis Hart's evidence and his demeanour were less than inspiring.

At one point Hart raised the ire of the gallery with a sort of sneering reference to what the church is now doing as being "better late than never:"  However, I don't think Hart is worthy of consideration.  Aside from the sexual abuse controversy, based on what makes the newspapers about Hart I don't think he's much of an Archbishop. Archbishops are meant to act as shepherds protecting the sheep, their flock.  Clearly, Pell and his Melbourne successor, Hart do not meet Jesus's qualifications for shepherds. 

What I want to open for consideration concerns George Pell.  If you watched the performance of George Pell at the Inquiry yesterday, what or whom did you see?  As I watched, I did not see someone who was a Jesus follower or imitator.  I saw a corporate CEO or Business Manager.  I did not see someone who became Christ every time he said mass.  You see, the Catholic Church refuses to ordain women - based on the sacramental doctrines underlying the priesthood and the eucharist.  Well, the macho interpretation of them!

The teachings of Jesus are seldom brought up in regard to the sexual abuse of children - whether in reference to Catholicism or any other Christian organisations.

Jesus said in Matthew Chapter 18 verse 6

But if you cause one of these little ones who trusts in me to fall into sin, it would be better for you to have a large millstone tied around your neck and be drowned in the depths of the sea.    -  New living translation

I take this to mean not that the children fall into sin.  Instead, it refers to the gravity, the depth of depravity, when those old enough to reason morally draw children into their own web of sin.

Does that refer specifically to paedophilia?  I think not.  There are all sorts of moral depravity by which adults might draw the young into their web.  Violence, corruption - and, the current cause of concern, gambling - are just a few of the categories that spring to mind by which adults might corrupt the young.

While there are adults who draw children into the world of paedophilia in a direct manner, should we go on to consider those who provide the fertile soil in which paedophilia operates, grows, networks?  I think so.

Watching Pell the CEO, the Business Manager before the parliamentary inquiry, Australians could see on display the self-satisfaction, the self-serving nature of the social milieu in which Catholic clerics - particularly those at higher levels of the Catholic hierarchy - are immersed.

To take the point further, I would suggest that one cannot ignore the history of Christianity and its continuing relationship, over the last 1700 years, with Empire.

Jesus pointed out that His kingdom was not a kingdom of this world and neither was it akin to a worldly empire. There might have been a reformation and a split from the Roman form of Christianity but the role and power of Empire was displayed in a similar manner within the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Church of England, and the Lutheran Church.   Such a relationship of Christianity to empire is seen in contemporary USA politics via the Tea Party.

A factor in perverse sexuality which damages other human beings is dominance: dominance of the paedophiliac over a child; dominance of male over female; exploitation of of one person by another simply because one is able to control and dominate another.  Religion can play a dominating and power role in the lives of individuals and, in this manner, has the capacity to become a transmitter of exploitative, harmful, and soul-destroying desires.

In short, I am saying that Pell and Co are not only at fault in their response to the victims of paedophiliacs.  They are part of a self-perpetuating social milieu which enables paedophiliacs to perpetrate and enforce their desires.

Not all Christian faith communities are associated with or cosy-ing up to Empire.  There are faith communities who are aloof from Empire ... and, even within their communities, paedophiliacs may be discovered. However, having said this, it would seem that in those communities paedophiliacs are fewer in number that those in the faith communities associated with Empire.

If all that is not convincing, I would simply draw attention to the second part of the two commandments given by Jesus.   As for the Catholic Church's response to legal action, its prelates seem to have forgotten completely the words of Jesus on how to respond when being sued. 

Addendum:
It seemed to make things worse:  Pell sorry over meeting

Beware the Political Inquisition - especially women and less than powerful men

Galileo before the Holy Office - with a little superimposition from Miss Eagle

After reading this and this, I was reminded once more of the men and women of Australia who have been involved in politics; who have come off second-best in the politics and power stakes; and who have ended up in prison because of it.

I first came to think of this in relation to the fall-out from the Fitzgerald Inquiry.  It seemed to me then and still does almost twenty-five years after its conclusion that some people of little influence were hung out to dry. Some people received political pay-back and some influential people got off scot-free.  Below is a an edited list taken from Wikipedia's list of Australian politicians convicted of crimes.

Name	Year	Party	Offence	Sentence	Notes
Brian Austin	1990	National Party	misappropriating public funds	15 mths
Leisha Harvey	1990	National Party	misappropriating public funds	12 mths	7 months served in home detention
Don Lane	1990	National Party	misappropriating public funds	12 mths
Geoff Muntz	1990	National Party	misappropriating public funds	12 mths

Brian Austin and Don Lane were considered turn-coats by some people since they had left the Liberal Party and joined the National Party.  They each held Brisbane seats and Brisbane has never been natural territory for the National Party which relies on regional and rural votes.  One view is that Austin and Lane switched parties to save their careers from being demoted or challenged by the Liberal Party itself.  Could this have had a bearing on the charges, verdicts, and sentences of these men when one considers the likelihood of significant numbers of the Brisbane legal profession having Liberal Party membership?  Political pay-back?

Harvey and Muntz were junior ministers who had done nothing to show any great political prowess or intellect.  Could these two have been sacrificial lambs offered up to the gods of justice?

Two very senior ministers stood trial but were acquitted. These were Ivan Gibbs - whose post-mortem tributes mention nothing of his trial - and Joh Bjelke-Peterson who was also acquitted amid allegations of jury rigging by the Young Nationals to find Joh 'not guilty'. 

For more on people associated with this political era which ended in electoral loss for the National and Liberal Party Government, please see Evan Whitton's view of events. 

For more recent adverse results from the Political Inquisition, let's look at the cases of Diane Fingleton, Pauline Hanson and David Etteridge.   

Di Fingleton is or was a member of the Australian Labor Party. Labor, under Peter Beattie, was in government in Queensland when she had to face the Political Inquisition.  Did Beattie do anything to defend her?  I don't know.  I have been told stories of sexism at the Brisbane Bar.  If true, does this attitude overflow to work against women on trial?  Etteridge was/is of slight political significance in the overall scheme of things - but if Hanson had to go, then so did he.  

The fact that these three cases were dismissed by the High Court of Australia leads me to ponder on the role of a Chief Justice.  Should the Chief Justice of Queensland have reviewed these three cases to ensure the safety of the decisions and verdicts?  If this is not part of the role of a Chief Justice, could the duties of the role please be explained to me? 

So in Australia we are not guillotining or shooting our political  opponents. We are not sticking poisonous needles into their limbs nor are we giving them mysterious skin diseases.  However, I think people who stick their heads above the political parapets of this nation; who do not follow a party line; or who offend the influential and their mores should be aware and be warned.  

There is still the Political Inquisition - and who knows who can or will be next?

A tale of two troglodytes: how Julia called time and changed the game!

This blog is a participant in Blog Action Day 2012.

The theme is the Power of We -

which I believe the women of Australia

have demonstrated in support

of our first female prime minister, Julia Gillard,

and in support of reasonable civil discourse.

This is quite a story.

This post is Part 1.

I expect to follow up this afternoon with Part 2.

This wordcloud has come from  Turn Left 2013

I will leave it to a feminist PhD candidate to collect every last thread of this story.  Collecting the most recent and prominent threads has been enough.  Below please find a list of mainstream media links relating to Julia Gillard's speech last Tuesday 9 October 2012.  Among these links both the video and the transcript of the speech are available.

I believe a number of factors led to the speech of 9 October.

Firstly, the ongoing vileness day after day, week after week by conservative forces and the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott.  Please go here to see some of the images used against Julia Gillard.  Many women face sexism and misogyny every day and have to let it go by with dignity - so it has been believed.  There is no doubt that Julia let it go by with dignity - but we do suspect she may have mentally rehearsed what she would actually say given the opportunity.

Secondly, she faced the Canberra Press Gallery to answer challenges which had been going on for a long time regarding events in her earlier life. Julia stood there taking every question the gallery asked and answering in detail.  My view is that if they had stayed there until midnight, she would have kept up her strong demeanour and kept answering their questions.  As it turned out, the gallery ran out of questions after 55 minutes.  But it was a tour deforce with Julia remaining composed, answering lucidly, and even giving some interchange.

Thirdly, what doesn't break me makes me stronger. Unfortunately for the conservative opposition, the Liberal National Party Coalition, they have continued their hardline and vile tactics for over two years. Australia has a 'hung' parliament with the government holding on by a thread with support of a mixed bag of independents and teeny-tiny parties. For Julia and her manager of government business, Anthony Albanese, some days it must feel like herding cats.  Every day that parliament sits, the Labor government is only a vote or two or three away from defeat.  Yet Labor has not toppled as the Opposition expected ... and day by day their frustration, their hatred, their violent language has become more putrid.

So while some believe that Julia Gillard remains the Prime Minister of Australia by luck and with the help of petulant independents, her misogyny and sexism speech proves beyond doubt that this is a strong woman with a sound intellect who is competent, competitive, and determined.  This is what electrified and transfixed Australia - and, as it turned out, the world - last Tuesday.

Now we see and hear a mystified mainstream media trying to play catch up.  They focus on what led to the speech - matters surrounding the now resigned Speaker of the House of Representatives.  They say they had to give context to their reporting.  I have yet to hear any of our senior and serious journalists acknowledging that a number of narratives can co-exist and run concurrently, each with their own context.

The context of the eruption of social media was that a significant number of Australians - perhaps the majority - and possibly a majority of women were fed up.  We have been fed up with the negativity of the opposition.  We have been fed up with the vileness and violence of their language which has poisoned public discourse in Australia.  We want good government.  We don't want either our economy or our nation talked down to glorify the negative agenda of the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott.  Over and over with spontaneity since last Tuesday Australians have said "Enough is Enough".  I am not sure whether we have to wait a little longer to declare Julia's speech cathartic, a national release, rejoicing, breathing out at last.  We will wait to see if that is really the case.

But last Tuesday was significant.  I believe that the women of Australia reached a new milestone then.  Our drooping shoulders could now be lifted and braced. The misogyny and sexism and ridicule and diminution of women would now be fought with dignity and strength.  Men who share the values of Abbott and Jones will have to either shut up or justify themselves, their words, their actions.  Game on! Thank Julia!

For a distinguished review of the vile things
that have been visited upon Julia Gillard
please go to Anne Summers site - The Looking Glass.
Please note Anne's warning: there is a vanilla version,
then there is the R rated version, and then the pictures.
~~~~~~~~~

Here are a few blogs to give you a flavour
of the mood among women in The Land of Oz

boeufblogginon

Turn Left 2012

Blue Milk

Cafe Whispers

I realise that these blogs are only a minute representation

of the blogosphere on this topic.

Please, Networkers, feel free to send me

the name and URL of your favourites for inclusion.