Children have a right to care
Sometimes it seems the older I get the more passionate I become about certain issues. That contradicts my general tendency to take things as they come. Not much surprises me any more.
However, at the age of 41 I’m passionate about child protection. It bothers me that society turns a blind eye to child abuse.
Abuse is not just sexual, which is evil. Abuse is also emotional, physical, material, financial. It’s about love, care, attention and opportunity. Read more
What’s in a name?
That’s the logo of the Federal Government’s Area Consultative Committees (ACC). Not very impressive, is it? And you couldn’t blame anyone for wanting to change it. However, at what cost should it be changed?
Regional Development Minister Anthony Albanese announced just before Easter that ACCs would be replaced by a similar organisation called Regional Development Australia (RDA). Read more
National Party review
John Anderson was a strange choice to review the structure and operations of the National Party following its disastrous Federal Election performance, considering he was an architect of the party’s demise.
The Nationals were indistinguishable from the Liberals under his leadership. It’s difficult to pinpoint any National Party legacy from the former Coalition Government.
The National Party (formerly the Country Party) has existed for 90 years as a collective of state-based organisations. Each state party has a unique history. Read more
Apologies
I have never subscribed to the view that nations or peoples should apologise for things that happened in the distant past.
In Australia’s case, white settlement and the so-called “stolen generation” are not reasons in my view to formally apologise to Aborigines today. What happened in the past happened in a certain context which was acceptable at the time.
It was interesting therefore to read that descendants of cannibals who killed and ate four Fijian missionaries in 1878 have apologised to Fiji for their forefathers’ actions.
Fiji’s high commissioner to Papua New Guinea accepted the apologies at a reconciliation ceremony near Rabaul in front of thousands of people.
Frankly, I don’t think the apology will mean much to the spirits of the deceased menu items or their descendants.
Where do you draw the line with these types of apologies? Should Denmark apologise for the Vikings raping and pillaging their way through Britain?
Nothing wrong with defence ads
In another example of crazy political correctness, the Defence Department has been forced to scrap a clever recruitment campaign because of some feminist complaints.
The cartoon-style ads feature a buxom “Diggeress” in various occupational poses including a Dental Corps nurse fairly bursting out of her medical uniform.
In other ads, our heroine is cooking, sitting behind a desk, climbing a tree and looking seductive in tight-fitting khaki. There’s even a wench with a wrench.
Apparently trade applicant enquiries went up from 35 to 450 in the first week of the campaign.
So what’s the problem? The defence forces need to appeal to a wider range of people than just unemployed young males who like guns and sex sells.
However: Defence spokesman Brigadier Andrew Nikolic said the military received complaints about the cartoons and recognised that “sections of the community found some of the material inappropriate”. Humbug.
Revive decentralisation
Up until the late 1970s the Labor Party and the Country Party were advocates of decentralisation. There was a commonly held belief that Australia’s population should not be too concentrated in the capital cities.
In 1966 Gough Whitlam delivered a speech in which he said that decentralisation was necessary to cut down “the vast social costs of the urban sprawl”.
Whitlam went on to develop a vision for the development of Albury-Wodonga as a major inland centre – a vision which has largely been achieved.
Decentralisation went out of favour under the treasury portfolios of John Howard and Paul Keating, who were economic rationalists, and the demise of the Country Party and DLP as political heavyweights.
There has never been a more important time in Australian history for decentralisation to be put back on the policy agenda. Read more
Slavery abolished
Slavery was abolished on June 1, 1862 in all United States possessions, according to Brainy History. That’s exactly 145 years ago. This was during the Civil War, so it was a symbolic but hollow gesture if the date is correct.
The slave trade in Britain was made illegal in 1802, backed by further legislation in 1807 and 1833. Royal Navy ships were vigilant in stopping the trade.
American history intrigues me. I often think the world could have been a much different place if events had transpired differently.
For instance, if the American colonies had remained British, how would the world look today? I think it would be a better place, although the USA itself would not exist as we know it. There would be separate English, French and Spanish speaking independent countries.
That in itself would have put the brakes on American domination, which largely occurred through the country’s abstinence from World War One until the death, so to speak. Europe and the British Dominions suffered while America profited.
Slavery had to be abolished and it’s a wonder it took the Americans so long to realise that. Whatever you think about British imperialism, in my mind they were the best colonists and the ones with the most altruistic world view.
If Australia had been settled by the Spanish, Dutch or French, for instance. we would be a much different country today, probably more like Argentina, South Africa or Mauritius.
Bad politics and bad PR
In an extraordinary admission, the Howard Government today conceded it “got it wrong” when Work Choices laws were introduced without proper protection for those losing benefits.
This is cynical, desperate behavior, bad politics and bad public relations. In my view it’s also a lie that the government didn’t know that was a possible consequence.
“We got it wrong. We under estimated what would have happened if we put in place a system that may lead to people trading away penalty rates without fair compensation. We are now putting in place a stronger safety net. We are ensuring that people get more, not less, insofar as the law can,” Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey (right) said.
I’ve said previously that industrial relations policy was the last ideological battleground in Australian politics.
I believe the Liberal Party succumbed to ideology over pragmatism on this issue for the only remarkable time in John Howard’s tenure. Read more
The future of the Federation
The Council of Australian Governments meeting (COAG) this week illustrates the farce of the Australian Federation.
There was a lot of hot air and little was achieved. With all the states being Labor and the Commonwealth being Liberal there is never going to be much effort invested in achieving positive outcomes, especially in a national election year.
It begs the question is the federation worth keeping? Is there a better model?
Certainly the nature of the federation has changed since six self-ruling colonies combined to create a new nation. This led to common policies for immigration and defence, and abolished the customs posts on borders. Read more
The world is going mad #2
Karyn writes about a practice called “happy slapping” which happily I’ve not heard of before. She defines it this way:
Originally, the idea was to walk up to some random stranger and slap them, while friends recorded the event on their mobile phones. Hilarious, I don’t think! Whatever endorphins that act released obviously became very attractive, because it has now become de rigeur to commit acts of minor violence upon random strangers even when there is nobody there to record the event.
I hope this bizarre behaviour doesn’t travel past England’s shores in popularity but I won’t be surprised if it does, or if indeed it’s already happening in Australian cities.
At the age of 40 it’s tempting to moralise about the lack of values in today’s society. I won’t though. I’ll look for other explanations instead.
The “happy slapping” attack on Karyn’s 13-year-old son struck a chord with me because this week we reported a random act of violence in the Kalgoorlie Miner. A group of five white males bashed and kicked an elderly Aboriginal man who asked them for a cigarette outside a Boulder hotel. Read more
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