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When our overly-entitled politicians lift their snouts from the trough to tell us that Australia’s budgetary woes require us to cut spending on the most disadvantaged in society, it is unsurprising that they are met with cynicism. And this cynicism is hardly unwarranted.
The rhetoric of our “Problem with welfare,” has been used by a number of treasurers recently (think of phrases like “Lifters and leaners,” or “Taxed and taxed-nots,”) to justify unpopular budget cuts that seem to have greatest impact on the unemployed, the disabled and the elderly. Read full article
Do I really want to tackle this?
I am going to have to go. I find it quite a difficult subject to fully get my head around, with a lot of emotional responses. More than normal, I would ask that readers keep the words from this article in context and read the whole piece before making a judgement. Perhaps understandably this topic tends to get grossly oversimplified for the most part. I am going to try to treat the issue (and by extension those of you reading this) with a bit more respect. But it is a really big topic too, so apologies if I don’t go into full detail with a few areas or omit a few elements of the debate that I think of as a bit more peripheral. Read Full Article
Now given that I find prejudice and bigotry repugnant it is probably impossible for me to ever wholly agree with Corey Bernardi, but I can at least understand where he is coming from. Yep I actually said that, I can kind of see Corey Bernardi’s point of view (I feel like I need a shower).
That isn’t the same as agreeing with it. I don’t, but I at least get why some people feel section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act should be modified. It is a bit of an unfair simplification to say those who want to amend The Act want a legislative right to racially insult and offend others. The idea that I could unintentionally offend someone with an offhand comment and be found to be acting unlawfully does throw up the interesting conundrum that the lawfulness of my action is subjectively decided by how easily offended my audience is. Is this how our laws should work? Read full article Do you think we make our own luck? At what I might hesitantly call the macro level, we obviously have little control over many major events that influence our lives. The level of privilege we are born into, genetics, aspects of our health and many other major tragedies and unexpected benefits that touch our lives unevenly without any control on our part.
But many times we are contributors to our luck. Read full article
So I was pretty dismissive of Sonia Hanson- I mean Kruger (it is hard to tell them apart now) in a recent post, although I want to again point out I said she is stupid but not necessarily racist. She waded into a discussion of something she really didn’t understand (or hadn’t bothered to think about) the complexities of.
Despite her ignorance on the subject, some Australians felt that Kruger had a right to be heard on this subject. While many articles like mine were critical of Kruger’s stupidity, others were quick to jump to her defence. Now I don’t mind being criticised and having to defend my position (don’t feel sorry for me) but I never really had to, as no one raised a logical rebuttal to any arguments made critical of Kruger. The general defence of Kruger and her ilk has been the rather oxymoronic argument, ‘Don’t use your free speech to criticise someone else using their freedom of speech.’ Read full article It was no surprise at all that within days of scraping back into government, the Coalition began to back away further from any action towards equality for same sex couples. No surprise, but an interesting choice. They could have perhaps started to work towards regaining some electoral support from moderate voters who left them in droves leading to the almost fatal blow to Malcolm Turnbull’s brand (like many, I will be surprised if he leads the party to the next election).
Nope, not this Coalition. Spurred on by the nationals and raving zealots like Bernardi and Abbott (who never worried about moderate supporters to begin with), the government seems poised to lurch further away from widespread community expectations of responsible governance in areas such as economic management, climate policy and marriage equality. Unsurprisingly, the fate of the controversial non-binding plebiscite remains clouded. There is certainly no sign of Turnbull growing a spine and bringing reform to parliament directly, but the timeline for the plebiscite seems to be stretching further and further into the future. I shake my head slightly despairingly, but I actually don’t know whether to be upset about this or not. Read Full Article
There is some really frightening and awful stuff happening in the US at the moment and I am not even talking about Donald Trump. The Black Lives Matter campaign was thrust back into the spotlight when two more men were fatally and inexplicably shot by police. Footage of the events went viral, prompting demonstrations across the country. At one of these demonstrations, five police officers were fatally shot and another nine wounded by Micah Johnson who was armed with an assault rifle.
Read Full Article “The world has gone soft!”
“We never used to worry about things like that!” “Political correctness is ruining this country!” Ever heard statements like these? I seem to hear them periodically both in person and following public discourse. Every now and then a post even comes across my Facebook news feed that points out how much has changed from when I was growing up in the 80s, playing to a commonly-voiced complaint that society is becoming overly sensitive (or ‘wowserish’ as David Leyjonhelm likes to complain) and how everyone was happier when we were less politically correct and safety conscious. Read Full Article This game started with all the gentle civility of David Leyjonhelm’s Twitter activity. Both teams were into each other before the first bounce. I am not a real fan of niggle behind play. Firstly it relies on the “What happens on the field stays on the field,” argument, which implies that one standard of behaviour is acceptable on the field that would be unacceptable elsewhere. Aside from completely rejecting this argument, I am yet to be convinced that it makes the players play any better, and would suggest it can have the opposite effect. Perhaps it was a coincidence but neither team played particularly well tonight and Port had given away two free kicks before they even touched the ball.
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I realised that the website was getting a little difficult to keep track of and people would have no way of keeping track of which new posts were recent. I will use this page to display links to any new articles from now on.
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