...And Justice For All - Leon Bertrand's Blog of Reason

Why tribunals shouldn't make business decisions

2009-07-15T14:39:00.000+10:00

Inexcusable excused

Before Workchoices, the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC) used to find unfair dismissals in all but the most extreme cases. Workers found stealing or who had resigned also got reinstated. And yet again, we have a similar result:

A POLICE officer who sexually harassed and assaulted female officers and members of the public has had an application to be reinstated upheld by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal.
Sergeant Raymond Sewell grabbed the buttocks of a colleague's wife, asked to smell another colleague's breasts and told "offensive and inappropriate" jokes of a sexual nature in front of a group of women while attached to Coonamble police station in late 2005 and early 2006...
Later that year, Sgt Sewell, who was then working for an abattoir, applied for a review of his dismissal at the Industrial Relations Commission. In May 2008 Justice Wayne Haylen upheld his claim, calling his dismissal "harsh and unfair".
While it was found Sgt Sewell had lied during police interviews and the allegations against him had been proved, his behaviour during the two-month period in which the incidences occurred
were an anomaly in his long police career, Justice Haylen said.

In a day and age where sexual harassment in the workplace is so explosive, any employer not sacking an employee in such circumstances would be in the wrong for exposing other employees to this sort of conduct.

In this case the employer can't win - if they keep the employee they can be vicariously sued for sexual harassment / negligence and if they sack the employee they are found to have done so harshly and ordered to pay compensation.

This is why letting tribunal members - many of whom have never even worked in the private sector - substitute their decisions for those of employers is fundamentally dangerous, unfair and irresponsible.

Let this be a lesson to my left-wing friends.

Only alarming when its warm

2009-07-15T14:19:00.002+10:00

Cold = hot

Once again, Brisbane is having another big cold snap in the middle of winter, but no-one puts it down to global cooling, whilst every hot day in summer is blamed on global warming.

But give them credit. At least they didn't claim the cooling is due to global warming, somehow.

Turnbull recovering from utegate

2009-07-14T07:50:00.004+10:00

Clawing back

Early signs are that Malcolm Turnbull is starting to recover from the utegate debacle, where he overstepped the mark by suggesting the PM should resign on the basis of an email which turned out to be a fake.

Mind you, Howard biographer Peter van Onselen reckons the fact that Hockey is preferred as leader to Turnbull is disastrous to the leader of the Opposition.

If only Stern Hu had joined Al-Qaeda

2009-07-13T12:41:00.000+10:00

######## ignored

This blog has often noted, discussed and explored the tendency for the left to be selectively compassionate. In today's The Australian, Janet Albrechtsen finds that in spite of the fact that he has not supported terrorism or betrayed Australia, Stern Hu is not getting near the amount of concern that David Hicks received from the left:

ALMOST the moment David Hicks was being measured up for his orange
Gitmo jump suit, our vast array of human rights activists were up and running a
very vocal campaign, castigating the evil Yanks for incarcerating one of our own
and demanding that his rights be protected. Get Up was not established until
2005, but they certainly threw all their energy into their David Hicks campaign
once they started. A petition was sent to then Foreign Minister Alexander Downer announcing that “All Australians have a right to receive a fair trial.” Then there were television advertisements, full-page newspaper ads and carbon-offset mobile billboards. Candlelight vigils were held, public addresses given and a “Postcards to the PM” campaign demanding action.
The Get Up guys say on their website that “we will continue to fight any infringements on the basic rights and liberties of all Australians.”
Ok, so now that Get Up are a well-established, well-oiled social activist group where are they on Stern Hu, the Australian-born Chinese Rio Tinto businessman who has been detained by Chinese authorities and apparently stands accused of espionage and stealing state secrets?
I checked Get Up’s website. Nothing there. It was a case of Mr Who? Same absence of interest over at Liberty Victoria. But let’s be fair and give them time. Maybe we will soon hear from Amnesty International, the various trade unions and civil libertarians who so eagerly became involved in the Fair Go For David campaign and the International Day of Action for David Hicks? Will we see a Fair Go For Stern operation? Or could it be that the brigade of do-gooders who paraded their commitment to human rights for David Hicks were largely driven by the fact that Hicks was imprisoned by Americans under the watch of President George W Bush?
Poor Mr Hu had the misfortune to be arrested by the Chinese hence there appears to be lacking the same level of angst for human rights among our activists. No doubt Mr Hu’s status as a businessman, rather than a restless young man from Adelaide who went off to Afghanistan to fight for the Islamists also accounts for a certain lack of fervour for Mr Hu’s human rights.

I'm sure if the Chinese authorities were somehow able to show that Mr Hu had been planning a terrorist attack on the Australian embassy in Beijing, the left's support and mobilisation for his rights would be equal to the passionate support which was witnessed for Hick's rights. Or for Mamdouh Habib's.

But since Hu is a law-abiding citizen who just wanted to do business with China, he is receiving the cold shoulder from the self-anointed compassionate side of politics.

The left's failure to stand for the rights of Mr Hu is further evidence that their compassion is often more confected and ideological than genuine.

Why Palin should not be nominated for 2012

2009-07-13T06:53:00.000+10:00

Uninformed and unelectable

Cathy Young explains why, as this blog recently argued, Sarah Palin is not the future of American conservativism:

It's not just the "liberal elites" that found Palin clueless; so did many in her own camp. Indeed, Douthat concedes she has to "bone up on the issues" if she is to have a political future. Those who believe Palin held her own debating Joe Biden forget that the McCain camp had requested a less-challenging format for that debate, with follow-up questions limited.

Palin critics on the right—George Will, Peggy Noonan, David Frum—have been slammed by the Palinistas as "haters," elitists threatened by a political star without proper intellectual credentials. Yet these same conservatives have been devout admirers of Ronald Reagan, hardly a product of the Ivy League.

Some of Palin's followers see her as the second coming of Reagan. But Reagan, despised as a "dunce" by his liberal detractors, had extensively read, written, and talked about the key issues of his day. While not an intellectual, he was a man of ideas. Palin is not known to harbor those. Her appeal is described in terms of "speaking from the heart" and exemplifying the virtues of faith and family—which is ironic, given the usual conservative derision of emotion-based liberal politics. Shortly after Palin's nomination, former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson suggested that her choice to bear a child with Down's Syndrome rather than have an abortion was an adequate substitute for a political philosophy.

If Palin does have a philosophy, it is the flip side of the class-and-culture warfare of which she has been a target. In fact, it was Palin who fired many of the volleys in this war—extolling the moral superiority of small towns and rural areas and calling them "pro-American parts of the country," mocking people who had traveled abroad as spoiled kids with rich parents.

While eschewing "victim feminism," Palin has enthusiastically embraced "victim conservatism": the grievances of cultural traditionalists who feel trampled and disdained by the more educated and influential (and often, more affluent) segments of American society. Like the "oppressed groups" of the left, these traditionalists have some valid complaints but channel them into a destructive ideology of polarization and resentment.

Such a zeal can energize the base—but also fatally split it and alienate the unconverted.

Well written. At the end of the day, the Republican Party will have to put up a credible candidate in 2012 who can appeal to people outside the party's rusted on support base. That person is not Sarah Palin.

Conversation with alleged victim never happened

2009-07-12T18:35:00.003+10:00

Case collapsing

The rape case against Victorian Labor MP Theo Theophanous appears to be collapsing:

Correspondence that could support a woman's claims that Labor MP Theo Theophanous raped her may have been falsified, throwing doubt on the allegations against him.

Two former friends of the woman told a committal hearing in the Melbourne Magistrates Court yesterday that conversations attributed to them in letters and emails from the alleged victim never happened.

Unless the prosecution has one or two aces up its sleeve, these proceedings may not progress beyond the committal stage.

Ban on tables violates transparency, choice and freedom

2009-07-12T17:35:00.003+10:00

Well said

An eloquent and inspiring letter to Barry O'Farrell by former Young Liberal Tim Andrews, writing from Washington about O'Farrell's disappointing decision to support the banning of school league tables.

Time for the NSW Libs to start embracing their own values, rather than supporting the Green's far-left agenda.

When mandatory mediation fails in divorces

2009-07-11T18:58:00.001+10:00

Negotiations fail

This blog has previously pointed out the drawbacks of compulsory Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) methods. Dispute resolution expert John Zeleznikow points out what really happens in mandatory mediations in the family court system:

In reality, parents often feel coerced into accepting shared parenting plans out of need, fear, ignorance, guilt or low expectations. Compelling parties to mediate fundamentally undermines both the fairness and effectiveness of the process to the point where it can be no longer legitimate. A good faith requirement exists in the 2007 amendment which includes the need for participants to make a ‘genuine effort' at resolving the dispute. Unless disputants are certified as making this ‘genuine effort,' they cannot proceed to a judicial decision.
But how do we measure the notion of ‘good faith' and ‘genuine effort'? And who has the responsibility for making such judgements? This is the most contentious aspect of the changes to Australian divorce laws. Some couples make very little effort to reach agreement, but are still issued with a certificate that allows them to proceed to court. They still want their ‘day in court' and only pay lip service to the need for ‘good faith' negotiations.

Family dispute mediators, for their part, aim to resolve a dispute, rather than assign blame. Some do not have the rigorous training and experience formerly held by court mediators. If they are to become family dispute resolution practitioners, weighing evidence and assigning blame, then they run the risk of duplicating the court system. Paradoxically, this leads to not only increased costs, but also to anger and resentment from the disputants, who have everything at stake.
True, there is provision to exempt certain cases from the compulsory nature of ADR, such as when domestic violence is alleged. But an informal exemption is not always sufficient to ensure that this never happens, especially as family violence is often kept secret. A survey conducted last year by the Australian Family of Studies found that a year after the amendment was introduced, many women with apprehended violence orders were forced into mediation with their partners, where further threats of abuse occurred.

What's more, anecdotal and preliminary statistics with family mediators suggests that the introduction of mandatory family mediation in Australia is counteracting one of its main objectives because we now have lower settlement rates than previously occurred. Once couples were compelled, rather than given a choice to mediate, only about 50% to 60% of them reached full settlement. That compares to around 80% when mediation was voluntary.

Whilst ADR should certainly be encouraged, making it mandatory is clearly counter-productive. People who are interested in arriving out of court agreements will do so without such requirements, whilst the rest will either be coerced, manipulated, or just have their time wasted by the system.

Instead of focusing on ADR like its the solution to everything, a new mantra of choice should be introduced, where free and informal mediations are readily available, but parties can choose to have their day in court instead.

Rudd admits that global climate deal unlikely

2009-07-11T15:47:00.005+10:00

Hot air continues

My internet has been down for a few days, for what are so far unconfirmed reasons. Apologies to my socialist readers who no doubt miss being intellectually savaged. Rest assured that I, a 'news junkie', have suffered greatly form only being able to watch one TV news show and only being up to date with developments in Le Tour de France.

Anyway, its delightful too see our warmenist PM concede that a global agreement on 'climate change' is unlikely:

PRIME Minister Kevin Rudd has conceded publicly for the first time that there was a real risk the Copenhagen summit in December could fail to reach a global emissions reduction deal.
Speaking at the conclusion of the G8 meeting at L’Aquila, Italy, where a meeting of 17 world leaders on the sidelines failed in its aim to kickstart the stalled talks, Mr Rudd said he would hold informal talks with other world leaders about how to break the global negotiating deadlock on climate change.
He admitted the negotiations were clearly "not on track" and that "without a further injection of political will from leaders you can see quite easily how this could not achieve an outcome."

Surprise, surprise. You would think this would make our Kevin reconsider his hair-brained emissions trading scheme. But don't hold your breath. The next thing to be rationed in Kevin's social democracy utopia will probably be exhaling.

Today Tonight defames again

2009-07-09T15:04:00.005+10:00

Show shamed

Nor for the first time, the Seven Network's Today Tonight has been found to have defamed one of the victims of its hatchet jobs by a court of law:

THE Seven Network has been ordered to pay $240,000 in defamation damages to a mortgage broker falsely portrayed as having fleeced $1 million from a dementia patient.
In awarding the damages to Peter Mahommed, Justice David Kirby said the elderly woman had not suffered from dementia and was a "practised fraudster". Mr Mahommed, 53, sued Channel Seven in the NSW Supreme Court over a June 2004 Today Tonight program and two earlier promotional broadcasts screened throughout most of Australia.
He had worked in the Newcastle area but since the show could not continue in the job.
He moved house, grew a beard and wore a baseball cap so people would not recognise him. "In the five years that have elapsed since the program, Mr Mahommed has certainly aged and presented as a person much less confident than
he appeared on the screen," the judge said. In the first promotion, a voice-over said: "Stolen, stolen, stolen. The million dollar dementia patient rip-off.

Remember the Mercedes Corby case? In that one, they made allegations about Schapelle's sistser which they couldn't substantiated, and paid a lump sum accordingly.

This is a show which certainly needs to lift the accuracy and quality of its reporting.

Welcome to Rudd's nanny state

2009-07-08T21:46:00.000+10:00

Rudd's red tape

Plans are being prepared to stop tourists from climbing Uluru. This policy, as well as the plan to censor the internet, introduce paid maternity leave and massive over-regulation of industrial relations confirm the Rudd Government as being one of the most intrusive governments Australia has had in many years.

Nuttal takes to the stand in own trial

2009-07-08T18:41:00.007+10:00

Payments proper?

Former Queensland Beattie Government Minister Gordon Nuttal took the stand today to argue that there was nothing inappropriate in his accepting of hundreds of thousands of dollars from wealthy businessmen.

The case has already had Premier Anna Bligh appear as witnesses, as well as Peter Beattie.

I wonder how he went.

UPDATE: Nuttal claims he did no favours for the businessmen who kindly gave him so much money:

Nuttall denied ever having offered anyone political favours for money, saying he had no capacity to do so.

"I know people think that because we're a member of parliament we can do that, and pull strings, but ... it's just impossible because of the (parliamentary) checks and balances," he said.

"My portfolio didn't cover any of the areas that affected (their) business interests."

Nuttall also contends the payments were "transparent", even though they were not declared on the pecuniary interests register:

Nuttall said he had been entirely transparent in obtaining the money.

"Any person with any nous could follow where the money was coming from and where the money was going", he said.

"If I was being dishonest I was pretty bad at it."

Nuttall said he did not declare the money on the parliament's pecuniary interests register as he believed the payments fell into the "gifts" category.

Hang on. I thought the money was a loan (which was subsequently "written off").

Fair Pay Commission keeps the low paid in jobs

2009-07-08T14:20:00.002+10:00

Wage wisdom

The Fair Pay Commission made a good sensible decision today by freezing the minimum wage this year in response to the worsening economy. In a time where workers are losing their jobs are businesses are struggling to hang on to staff, there is no doubt that this decision will have saved many jobs.

Julia Gillard has slammed the decision, even though she earlier this year admitted what few the union movement do: that there is a negative relationship between minimum wages and employment. contradictions within the Rudd Government just keep on coming.

There is a pseudo-economic argument advanced by union duds such as Sharran Burrow that increased minimum wages are actually good for for the economy right now because higher incomes help boost demand. This view, debunked on this blog before and which denies the relationship between base wages and unemployment, has been proven wrong in the past:

Before leading workers to the barricades in the midst of a serious downturn, Ms Burrow, and media commentators too inexperienced to question the ACTU line, should review the history of the militant Amalgamated Metal Workers Union during the 1981 recession. A collective bargain ratified by the full bench of the then-Arbitration Commission gave 400,000 metalworkers an average rise in hourly wages of 24 per cent. It also cost them 100,000 jobs.

So a 24% pay rise resulted in 25% of workers losing their jobs. If these workers had been on an average of $25,000 before that decision, that would have meant that that's $25,000 in come they would have to spend, once tax is taken out. The pay rise accompanied by 25% job losses would mean an average amount of income of $23,250 when you take into account those workers who were laid off as a consequence. So that's on average $1,500 less per worker to stimulate the economy.

Such analysis does not of course take into account the welfare payments which would have gone to those workers who were laid off. But this of course would have impacted on the budget bottom line. When stimulus spending is required, it should be spent in efficient, productive ways, rather than supporting a system of winners and losers where some get to keep their jobs with hefty pay rises whilst the others get laid off.

UPDATE: The economic illiterates at Larvatus Prodeo claim that "the notion that there is a strong correlation between small rises in minimum wages and unemployment" has been "debunked". Interestingly, the data they rely on only applied to economic upturns, not downturns, so once again LP reveals its ignorance when it comes to economics.

It isn't very compassionate to ignore evidence that increasing minimum wages will do some of the lowest paid out of their jobs.

UPDATE 2: Economics editor Michael Stutchbury thinks the FPC's ruling will save thousands of jobs:

AT last, one of Australia’s job market regulators does something to minimise, rather than worsen, the recession’s jobless toll.

Tellingly, it has taken a final act of principle from John Howard’s Fair Pay Commission to deliver the blindingly obvious policy truth: that it is madness to force business to pay more to employ low-skilled workers during the deepest downturn in the world economy since the 1930s.

So far, business has avoided mass sackings by shifting workers to shorter hours. Imagine if the Fair Pay Commission had listened to the ACTU demand for a $21-a-week increase in the already-high minimum wage floor. Instead, its parting decision to freeze the minimum wage at $14.31 an hour will save tens of thousands of the most vulnerable workers from being forced on to the jobless scrap heap with a risk of being trapped in long-term unemployment.

Labor governments are supposed to care most about these vulnerable Australians and about promoting jobs. Instead, we now have a Labor Treasurer and a Labor Employment Minister complaining about a decision that will save jobs. We have not had such bone-headed economic nonsense from those in power in Canberra since the Whitlam government.

Labor turns industrial relations into witchhunt

2009-07-07T21:19:00.002+10:00

Leftard lunacy

When it comes to Labor industrial relations laws and discrimination, employers are now to be presumed guilty:

THE Fair Work Ombudsman will use new powers to investigate companies for discriminating against workers, prompting employers to claim they risk being treated as "guilty until proven innocent".

Employers said the inclusion of anti-discrimination provisions in the Fair Work Act was the "great unknown" in the legislation. The new laws carry a reverse onus of proof so an employer must show the alleged discrimination did not occur....
The chamber's workplace policy director, David Gregory, said it was "the first time that we have seen these type of anti-discrimination provisions included within industrial relations legislation, it's generally been confined to equal opportunity legislation".

Mr Gregory said the reverse onus of proof provisions meant "an employer is guilty until proven innocent".
"No one has really got any idea about the extent to which it's going to be utilised by union and employees," he said. "It certainly is a significant new area and one that is creating a fair degree of uncertainty."

So Labor's talk about uncertainty being really bad for business apparently only applies when it comes to emissions trading. With unions being able to initiate proceedings and expecting to use this as a recruitment tool, it's no wonder businesses are so concerned.

But unions are not the only ones who support the measures. There's also the 'human rights' bureaucracy, led by Tom Calma, who floated a similar idea not too long ago:

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tom Calma wants the burden of proof in cases of racial discrimination to fall on the alleged offender, instead of the person making the complaint.

As Andrew Bolt retorted:

OK, Calma - I’ll start your ball rolling to hell. I accuse you of being a damn racist. Which, under your new regime, means a racist you are until you can prove you are not. In the meantime you should stand down, because a racist can’t hold your job, surely?

Of course, if you to accuse him of this, he would ask where's the evidence. But of course, a need for evidence doesn't apply otherwise.

There wouldn't be a need to reverse the onus of proof if there was lots of evidence of discrimination occurring in workplaces. The reality is that the vast majority workplaces are not discriminatory in any way. But all of them are now in danger of being found that they are, because they cannot always prove otherwise.

This surely has to be one of the worst decisions the Rudd Government has made so far.

And that's really saying something.

Rudd again fails to deliver on promise

2009-07-07T06:39:00.002+10:00

The homeless wait

Like with bringing down grocery prices, fixing the health system, the "education revolution", increasing Australia's productivity, "climate change" and virtually every other issue he promised to resolve, Kevin Rudd has so far talked but not acted on homelessness:

KEVIN Rudd's name is now personally and inextricably tied to fixing Australia's homeless crisis.

He visited homeless shelters in the nights before his 2007 election victory, listening to stories of heartbreak and despair. It was a deliberate sign of intent. His would be a different prime ministership to John Howard's hard-edged economic rationalist approach.

Rudd called homelessness a "national obscenity" in May last year as he launched the government's green paper on the issue. He vowed in December to halve homelessness by 2020, committing $1.2 billion over four years for homeless services and housing programs.

But the sector is getting antsy. And rightly so. It wants action on the ground because it knows early intervention programs aimed at families and young people represent the key to tackling homelessness, and programs don't work when they're still on the drawing board.

Tackling homelessness is of course laudable. The problem is that it's a complex and difficult issue. But so far, the government hasn't even started rolling out initiatives in this area.

Like with Bob Carr, I imagine that the longer Kevin Rudd stays in office, the longer and more apparent his record of policy failures and inaction will be.

Kevin Rudd could turn federal Labor into a rump, similar to NSW Labor.

UPDATE: Coincidentally, the Rudd Government has announced on the same day that its action plan is just about to be rolled out. It's good to have such a strong newspaper keeping the government accountable to its promises.

Pure Poison pwned perpetually

2009-07-06T19:36:00.006+10:00

Loser loses

Scott of Pure Poison calls me a 'bozo' in Crikey last Thursday, because I allegedly "cut-and-paste massive swathes of newspaper copy into a blog post, add a line or two of comment, and wait patiently for six or seven readers to accidentally stumble across the result while Googling “Britney vids”."

The reality of course is very different. This blog does not use "massive swathes" of the text of others. Instead, it primarily concerns the views and insights of its author. In fact, said author has published many pieces at Online Opinion, and did write one rather memorable piece for Crikey a couple of years ago. Since then Crikey's standards have lowered into leftoid lunacy - hence why even clowns like Bridges now get a run.

Secondly, as some have pointed out, it's just a bit rich for someone like Scott to be accusing others of cutting and pasting too much when one of his most recent posts copied and pasted an entire editorial of The Australian with the only original content and analysis provided by Bridges being "Here’s The Australian’s editorial today... Discuss."

What what else would one expect from a member of the web's most hypocritical blog?

Once again, the jokers at Pure Poison end up injuring themselves when they throw punches at others.

Burqa a product of oppression, not real choice

2009-07-05T18:58:00.004+10:00

Veil lifted

French President Nicholas Sarkozy's call to ban the burqa appears to have triggered a heated debate in Australia. It's certainly been interesting to watch the divergence in views within the left on an issue which probably should have been debated a long time ago.

Some leftists and feminists have come out and called for the burqa to be banned. To their credit, this is not only a sensible position but also one consistent with their beliefs. After-all the fact that some other cultures oppress women does not change the fact that its oppression. Tolerance of other cultures can only go so far, and barbaric elements of other cultures should not be allowed.

Not so surprising has been the opposition to the idea among some of the left. As this blog pointed out recently, this is because of the trendy leftist assumption that its mainly just white, heterosexual males who oppress others. Unfortunately, this adds yet another chapter to the left directly and indirectly supporting and colluding with Islamists.

Jeremy Sear's argument is particularly disingenuous. On the one hand, he opposes banning the burqa, on the implied but unstated assumption that all or most Muslim women must be wearing the burqa out of pure free choice, rather than being forced or brainwashed into doing so. This is in spite of his admission that female subjugation is a common occurrence in Muslim countries. Then, on the other hand, he opposes indoctrination in schools - as though schools are the only places where children are indoctrinated! So while Sear denies that women who wear the burqa tend to be indoctrinated, he in the same post discusses his opposition to such indoctrination. His argument almost contradicts itself.

Some leftists wonder if anyone calling for the ban has spoken with a woman who wears the burqa:

What shits me about feminists and Islamaphobes who decry the burqa is that none of them have actually asked the women who wear them if they feel oppressed. My ex-wife’s mother was a nurse at a top private hospital in London. Many of the patients she cared for were Saudi women (many getting cosmetic surgery) who would walk into the hospital in their burqa and then in the privacy of their suites remove them to reveal revealing Prada and Chanel clothing. If they felt oppressed she never noticed. After all if they were always covered by a burka why would they be getting nose jobs?

I have personally spoken with a couple of women who wear burqas, although never about the burqa. I do however recall reading an article of a female Western journalist who questioned a Muslim woman's wearing of it years ago. The Muslim woman in the burqa responded that the burqa allows for men to respect women because they are being modest, and then proceeded to generalise about Western women being raped and sexually harassed in western countries, as though these things don't occur in the Middle East. The woman is the burqa had clearly been indoctrinated, and was simply repeating what she had obviously heard from other Muslims many times.

Are there women who have not been brainwashed as children and who willingly wear the burqa? The answer to this question is yes. The two cases I know of are Rabiah Hutchinson and Raisah bint Alan Douglas , both converts to Islam who are strongly associated with Al-Queda and terrorism. These two women would no doubt like the fact that leftists like Jeremy Sear support their right to cover their bodies from head to toe, including their faces. Although I doubt very much that would stop them from supporting terrorist attacks which kill people who believe in their right to wear the burqa.

Jeremy Sear apparently opposes female circumcision. The reason why so many people are opposed to it is because it is quite clearly an oppressive practice aimed at controlling women and supporting patriarchy. The same of course applies to the burqa, another aspect of the very same culture which ensures that women in those communities are not free. That some leftists deny that in nearly every case the burqa is not worn out out of real choice is disgraceful and appalling.

Time for leftists to lift the veil and confront the dark truth behind the burqa.

No to Sarah Palin in 2012

2009-07-04T17:41:00.001+10:00

Opportunity over

Sarah Palin has resigned as Governor of Alaska, presumably so that she can now prepare full time for her tilt at the White House in 2012.

But any candidate that has tripped up as much as she did last year is going to have a credibility problem with the wider electorate, even if they are popular within the base of the Republican Party.

Furthermore, Barack Obama has done a better job as President that I expected, so he will definitely be hard to beat in 2012.

Apparently Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are also both keen to contest the race in 2012. Guys, your chance was last time and your time is now up. Time to move aside and let a younger generation take over and give it their best shot.

Another study blames Howard, promotes feminism

2009-07-04T14:40:00.001+10:00

Agenda advanced

When you read the first sentence, you already know that it's ideological research aimed at promoting a feminist agenda:

THE Howard government's family policies left a legacy of stressed, overworked parents and set gender equity back a decade, a new study shows.

What's the Howard Government done now? How as inequity been set back a decade? apparently:

- mothers are now less likely to work full time - which is probably a good thing, since it means they get to spend more of their time with their children.

- woman are reporting feeling more stressed because they are doing most of the housework. Often, this is because women insist that the housework is done their way, or insist that they undertake many of the tasks.

- Male and female parents are reporting feeling more stressed.

I didn't know what policies of the Howard Government were being blamed, or which policies were being promoted by the academics behind the study, until I read this near the end of the article:

Dr Craig said paid parental leave would help solve the "stress problem".

Is that the best feminist academics can come up with when wanting to see a paid maternity leave scheme implemented? If so, the case for it is pretty weak, notwithstanding the misleading arguments advanced in its favour. Meanwhile, the case against is pretty strong.

Yet another instance of left-wing drivel being disguised as serious research.

Spot the Grodtards in Melbourne

2009-07-03T21:54:00.004+10:00

Gread gamed

The folks at Grodscorp - so self-obsessed and obsessed with the idea of being stalked by others - have now resorted to stalking themselves.

All is clearly not well behind their latte curtain.

Why the left's compassion is so selective

2009-07-03T18:47:00.005+10:00

Sear seared

My last post focused on the selectiveness of lefty compassion. In the words of David Burchell:

"empathy [has become], in effect, the handmaiden of ideology. We [have] learned to bestow empathy on those we approved of in our political fantasies, and to withhold empathy, with determined efficiency, from those we did not. We [have become] gymnasts of the heart."

Such observations hold very true of the left - the plights of others that they think confirm their fashionable and dogmatic theories are concentrated on with passionate outbursts of anger and feelings of injustice, with moral shades or inconvenient facts phased out in order to fit their ideological narratives. Such despised truths include the fact that David Hicks was a zealous member of Al-Qaeda, or that the Palestinians in Gaza have voted for Hamas and that many 'civilians' there actively or passively support Hamas. These facts are never mentioned in a left-wing rant about Hicks or Israel.

There is a particular set of left-wing dogmas in the West which account for nearly all of the inconsistencies in the degree to which the left feel compassion for different subjects around the world. That set of dogmas in short asserts that whites/heterosexuals/males invented/employed the concept(s) of race/sexuality/gender in order to create privilege themselves and oppress others. In Marxist philosophy, this idea is referred commonly to as instrumentalism.

All leftists accept this dogma to some extent. Therefore, they will express compassion for stories which support this narrative and often ignore others which don't. Hence why the left feels such a strong sense of compassion which overrides all rational thought when it comes to the disadvantages suffered by Aboriginals in Australia, the deaths of Palestinians as a result of Israeli missiles and bombings (Jewss for these purposes are regarded as Caucasians), women in the workplace, gays in Western countries, the detainees at Gitmo (most of whom are not white), Asian and Middle-Eastern refugees, the Indians who have been recently bashed in Australia (because they left mistakenly believe that whites were involved in most cases) etc etc.

Meanwhile, in cases where it is people of colour oppressing other people of colour, the left quite commonly callously turns the cold shoulder. Examples include the current horrors in Zimbabwe, the massacres in Burma, the killing of Tibetans by the Chinese and, more recently, the killing of Iranian protesters and oppression of the people here after the theocracy in that country rigged elections in order to keep an anti-Semitic Islamist President in power.

Examples where non-whites do bad things to whites often cause the left to go into denial. Observe for instance the fact that some in the left deny that the September 11 attacks in America were committed by Muslims, but was instead some giant and sinister conspiracy. Or the fact that the left like to pretend that Al-Qaeda, Hamas and Hezbollah are really nice fellows after-all with reasonable and legitimate grievances who are moderate or will be if we just give them what they want. Or the fact that most leftists deny that the Cronulla riots were caused by years of young Lebanese males bullying, harassing and assaulting others in the area for years. Whilst the left think of themselves as the more compassionate side of politics, their levels of compassion towards whites on these issues are usually non-existent.

So it's no surprise that left-wing barrister Jeremy "Wally" Sear is against the banning of the burqa:

Here’s a suggestion, Virginia – instead of banning what you see as “a tool of patriarchy used to subjugate women… [that] defies freedom… a symbol of control”, how about we simply work on making sure that all women – regardless of what they choose to wear – have options that make sure they are not stuck in the abusive and controlling situations you imagine...

Banning the wearing of an item of clothing completely misses the point, and makes you as patronising and oppressive as the people you believe you are railing against.

Note that Jeremy denies that it is likely that the burqa is invariably a symbol and tool used to control and oppress women in Islamic society. This notion is inconvenient to Jeremy because he accepts the dogma described above - the notion that a person of colour is oppressing another person or colour is far less plausible to him than the notion that whites are the main/ only oppressors.

In fact, Jeremy pulls off a spectacular reversal - instead of recognising that burqas are repressive, he argues that it's probably instead the case that our opposition to the burqas is oppressive:

Meanwhile, did you ever think there might be a different explanation for this, other than what you portray as an evil man oppressing a poor bullied woman -

I wanted to stop and ask why she had such disrespect for herself and our culture that she would hide her face and body under all that black cloth, designed to render her shapeless and inhuman. But her husband shot me a glance, and I was silenced. Dumbfounded.

Maybe he saw you as someone else who was going to abuse his wife – telling her what her choice of clothing meant according to you and how she should DO WHAT YOU TELL HER – and was getting ready to stand up with her against a patronising bigot.

Probably a good thing you couldn’t see her expression.

Mark Richardson is able to brilliantly summarise the foolish and dogmatic thinking which underlies such an attitude:

There's a fashionable idea on the left that whites invented the concept of race in order to gain an unearned privilege by oppressing others. Therefore, whites are held to be uniquely guilty of preventing the emergence of human equality. If you believe this theory then you will look for instances in which whites are the violent aggressors and non-whites are the oppressed victims.

Note also that usually when a conflict within the left's ideology occurs between their doctrines on gender and their doctrines of race, it's the latter that prevails. Jeremy has turned what should be a gender issue - the burqua used to oppress women - into a race issue ie. white people telling non-white people what to wear. This phenomenon has been observed by Tim Blair and many others. In Blair's words, "sensitivity to Islam trumps clitoral scissors every time".

To the right, it's about being compassionate to help mankind by solving problems in a rational and constructive way. To the left, it's about being selectively compassionate and focusing on outpourings of emotions and tokenism in accordance with the dictates of the trendy ideology of the day.

In other words, the right is about true compassion whilst the left is about the appearance of compassion.

And yet it's the left that consider themselves to be the most compassionate side of politics. Meanwhile, the right stands for real compassion.

Left's compassion conspicuously absent on Iran

2009-07-03T08:53:00.001+10:00

Islamists ignored

This blog has been keen to note the selective compassion of leftists. Whilst the left like to think they are the compassionate side of politics, the reality is that their compassion is only limited to certain classes of people in certain situations. More often than not, those they feel compassion towards have been allegedly wronged by those the left dislike.

For instance, the left have boundless compassion for David Hicks and other members of Al-Qaeda who were detained in Gitmo, which in itself implies a degree of indifference to the plight of the victims of 9/11. Of course, the latter involved an attack on the nation the international left dislikes the most, so that is why many leftists either choose not to talk about it, believe that America had it coming to it or subscribe to truther conspiracy theories.

In short, this blog agrees with David Burchell's assessment that "empathy became, in effect, the handmaiden of ideology. We learned to bestow empathy on those we approved of in our political fantasies, and to withhold empathy, with determined efficiency, from those we did not. We became gymnasts of the heart."

Yesterday, Greg Sheridan observed the chilling silence of the cultural left, champions of 'human rights', when it comes to the disgraceful events taking place in Iran:

THE missing actor in the tragic and gruesome story of Iran since the stolen election of June 12 has been the Western human rights lobby. Where is it?

What has happened in Iran is one of the pivotal events of our time. Tens of millions of Iranians voted against their demented President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and the corrupt, clerical misrule he represents. No one seriously doubts the electoral fraud.
The truth is the language and practice of human rights advocacy in the West has become completely corrupted by the postmodern ideologies of the contemporary Left. In this parallel universe all crimes are a subset of imperialism and the only true villains are the US, Israel and, for us, Australia.

When Frank Brennan commented that the Victorian human rights charter had been ineffective in its own terms and had little to do with human rights, but had become "a device for the delivery of a soft Left sectarian agenda", he was, perhaps somewhat unconsciously, making a broader point about the debasement and collapse of authentic human rights advocacy in the West.

Where are you on Iran, Louise Adler, happy to accuse Israel of war crimes without the slightest evidence, but apparently unstirred by the murder of hundreds of innocent civilians in Iran?

What have you got to say, Antony Loewenstein, stupidly and inaccurately labelling Israel an apartheid state and approvingly quoted in the Iranian official media, but listless on your blog in the face of the Iranian repression?

What about The Age's cartoonist Michael Leunig, who once drew a cartoon so morally obtuse, stupid and offensive that it was happily accepted by an Iranian newspaper in a competition for cartoons that would offend Jews (the cartoon was submitted without Leunig's knowledge), but who is apparently unmoved to draw an image in sympathy with young Iranian democrats?

The conclusion must be that many Western human rights organisations, and many of the most self-congratulatory and morally vain posturers, are not interested in human rights at all. They are interested in advancing a soft Left sectarian agenda. Except, of course, that the word soft may be wholly misplaced.

Just remember that these are the same people who accuse the Howard Government, the United States and Israel of being the most vicious abusers of human rights.

Even with its conspicuous silence the left colludes with Islamists.

UPDATE: Guy Rundle defends his fellow Crikey contributor Loewenstein:

Should Antony Loewenstein sue Greg Sheridan for libel? In his rather hysterical article in yesterday’s Oz, Sheridan slates various people for failing to condemn the actions of the Iranian government with the vociferousness with which they condemn Israel.

JF Beck points out how false Rundle's assertion is. So if anyone has committed a libel here, its Rundle.

Nice to know however that Rundle is staying true to his Orwellian leftism, this time with threats of legal action for a bit of fair scrutiny.

Perpetrators reported in Indigenous communities

2009-07-02T21:41:00.002+10:00

Justice for all

This blog as been noting the evidence that the intervention into Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory has been contributing to better well-being for children and adults in these communities.

There is more good news:

THE Commonwealth intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities has triggered a doubling in the reporting of sexual and physical abuse of children.
And new figures released by the Productivity Commission today have also shown the gap in life expectancies of indigenous and non-indigenous is closer than previously thought, closing from 20 years for men in 2002 to 12 years on combined data covering the period between 2005-2007.

Whilst it is disturbing that so much abuse of children is occurring in some of these communities, its good to see that the perpetrators are being increasingly reported. One can now understand why many adult Aboriginal males were so opposed to the intervention - those that were abusing kids or who knew of others abusing had good reason to fear better scrutiny and law enforcement.

However, it must also be said that there is some not so good news:

However, the report, released in Darwin at the meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, shows negligible improvement across a range of indicators of living covering health, housing and education.

The Rudd Government and the states are pumping at additional $4.6 billion into indigenous communities over the next six years as part of the Closing the Gap program, aimed at addressing indigenous disadvantage.

Part of the approach includes the continuation of the NT intervention, which was started by former prime minister John Howard in 2007, including bans on alcohol and pornography in indigenous communities as well as income management to ensure parents spend government assistance on food and shelter for their children.

Mind you, the results we could expect to see from the intervention would probably take a long time to materialise, given that we are dealing with cycles of abuse, joblessness, alcoholism, consumption of others drugs and violence.

Alternatively, it could mean that the intervention does need to be modified in order to achieve better results - which would hardly be surprising given the original intervention was rolled out as an emergency response.

Schoolteacher Scott out of his depth

2009-07-02T20:29:00.001+10:00

Facts unfound

Scott of Grodscorp, who fancies himself as a journalist ever since Crikey made the mistake of taking him on with Pure Poison, claims that Malcolm Turnbull is visiting Afghanistan as a result of the damage done to his popularity over the recent utegate fiasco:

Just say you’re a political leader whose career is in serious (some say terminal) trouble after a self-inflicted couple of horror weeks in domestic politics, reflected by three simultaneously disastrous opinion polls. The winter break arrives to give you some welcome relief from the onslaught, a chance to lick your wounds, and the opportunity to regroup. So what do you do to try and reverse your fortunes? Work hard at developing policies? Grassroots campaigning?

Of course not. You visit the troops in Afghanistan for some nice pictures that aren’t at all a cynical attempt to boost your standing in the electorate by co-opting everything the soldiers stand for.

Scott obviously didn't engage in even elementary research before making this claim:

Mr Turnbull has just left Afghan airspace after the visit, which The Australian online understands was booked well in advance of the OzCar affair and recent opinion polls showing his popularity has fallen sharply in recent weeks.

This wouldn't be the first claim Scott has made which has resulted in his humiliation. Perhaps Scott should stick to his speciality of pointing out the typos of others.

It's not like Scott hasn't had enough material lately. The other week, I emailed this to him:

From: leon.bertrand@gmail.com
To: Scott Bridges
Date: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 6:21 PM
Title: Don't get too excited

" He was often criticised for lacking the courage to press his claims, with many observers contrasting his tactics to those of Paul Keating, who unsuccessfully challenged Bob Hawke in 2001 before launching another successful challenge from the back bench later that year."

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25662613-2702,00.html

I shortly followed with another email:

From: leon.bertrand@gmail.com
To: Scott Bridges
Date: Sat, Jun 20, 2009 at 6:24 PM
Title: there's more!

You may not have been stimulated with Rudd's package, but this certainly will for the rest of the year:

"He said Mr Keating had been fortunate to win the 2003 election because "he came up against (John) Hewson and Fightback (Hewson's GST manifesto)"."

I didn't get a response; presumably Scott the school teacher was working himself into a big lather over these simple errors.

Still, he got even more material to get excited over very recently:

Most winners have a list of things they want to do immediately – pay off the mortgage, pay off their children’s mortgages, have a holiday and buy that long lusted-for sport scar, boat or dream home.

Even when it comes to his greatest talent, Scott has been dropping the ball. I hope he hasn't missed the simple mistakes of his students at Brunswick Primary.

Or, to put it another way, I hope that he is a better teacher than he is a Crikey blogger.

The left wrong on Iraq - again

2009-07-02T08:56:00.002+10:00

Leftists pwned

In spite of the fact that US troops are gradually withdrawing, the violence in Iraq continues:

Iraqi forces were in control of towns and cities nationwide after the pullout of US troops six years after the invasion, but a bloody car bombing underscored the tough challenge ahead.
US President Barack Obama, who opposed the 2003 war ordered by his predecessor George W. Bush, hailed the US withdrawal as an "important milestone" but warned of difficult days of bloodshed and violence ahead.
The landmark day was marred by a bomb attack on a popular market in Kirkuk, an oil hub which has long been riven by ethnic tensions, which left 33 people dead and 92 wounded including women and children.
"The explosion occurred at a very busy time. I only saw fire and my stall was thrown over. I saw traders on fire in their shops and there were dead and wounded people on the ground," said Aras Omar Ghaffour, a 28-year-old vegetable stallholder.
Iraq marked the American pullback with a national holiday six years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein but sparked an insurgency and sectarian bloodshed that left tens of thousands dead.
American troops were to have quit built-up areas by midnight (2100 GMT), ahead of a complete pullout ordered by Obama by the end of 2011.

I have often read and heard leftists say that the only reason there are tensions and terrorist attacks in Iraq is because of the presence of US troops. For instance, left-wing blogger Kev Lovell states that:

al Qaeda is not, repeat not, an organisation that wants to ‘take over’ countries. It wants the infidel out of Muslim lands.

Such ignorance concerning international geopolitical matters is quite common among the cultural left, who vainly like to think of themselves as enlightened, sophisticated and worldly. The reality is that violence has escalated in Iraq ever since the United States started their gradual pull-out.

Naturally, the Iraqi President Nuri al-Maliki knows better:

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki took on critics of Iraq's army and police, saying they were up to the task of taking over from the Americans.
"It is an offence to the Iraqis. The people who said that the foreign troops would never withdraw and would keep permanent bases in our country were giving a green light to the terrorists to kill civilians," he said.

President Obama also knows better:

"Make no mistake, there will be difficult days ahead. We know that the violence in Iraq will continue; we see that already in the senseless bombing in Kirkuk earlier today," Obama said at the White House.

As does Defence Secretary Robert Gates:

US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday he expects "sporadic attacks" as Al-Qaeda fighters "increase the level of violence to try to pretend that they forced us out of the cities" and show weakness in the Iraqi forces.

The facts and the experts all confirm it: the left were dead WRONG on the causes of violence in Iraq, just as they were WRONG about the troop surge.