It is said that freedom of speech doesn’t protect speech you like; it protects speech you don’t like. The freedom includes the freedom to hold opinions and ideas without interference by public authority. Without free speech, no other rights can prosper: if it is silenced, one cannot claim, assert or defend any other right. However that doesn’t ...
ICAC: A Crime By Any Other Name
ICAC Changes: Why the Greens Are Wrong The Greens have published their rationale for voting in favour of changes to the ICAC. In a glossy, colourful release complete with photographs of no less than 27 carefree, happy, smiling faces we are told that all is well and that despite the changes, the ICAC is as strong as ...
What’s the Real Motive?
Once again the grandiose banner of “Your Right To Know” has been trotted out to justify a newspaper’s dishonourable exercise of self-interest. Under the populist guise of doing a public service, the press repeats the fallacious argument that the fact that an individual has been charged with a sexual offence is “hidden” from the public. The ...
Who Are We Kidding?
Interesting to contemplate what the election outcome might have been if all parties had been required by law to tell the truth while campaigning. And at last we can now dispense with the fiction that Australian elections are about national policies and simply search for a Mr or Mrs Popularity to run for PM. Morrison fills ...
Mine’s Bigger Than Yours
If the first few weeks are anything to go by, this election seems to have been reduced to a slanging match between the clown and the headmaster. The clown has nothing else to say other than ‘beware the bogey man’ and the headmaster has nothing else to say other than ‘the clown isn’t funny any more’. When ...
With Friends Like These …
John Howard’s disgraceful comments that Pell’s convictions for raping and molesting children doesn’t change his opinion of Pell at all, are clearly the ramblings of an individual who is struggling for relevance and has lost touch with reality. For Tony Abbott to express similar support, once again confirms that he has lost the capacity, if he ...
A Strange Way To Run A Country
Well, here's another fine mess they've got us into! Some say that our political system is the worst in the world – except for all of the rest - and while it has its pros, the dreadful spectacle of the last week has again revealed many of its cons. The stupidity of the loony right faction, who ...
Once Upon A Time, Long Ago
When the founder of the Liberal Party, Sir Robert Menzies said – “As the etymology of our name ‘Liberal’ indicates, we have stood for freedom … believing in the individual….We have realised that men and women are not just ciphers in a calculation, but are individual human beings … (and) to protect the individual from oppression….” he ...
The Hate Speech of the Privileged
The least surprising aspect of Senator Anning’s speech was that virtually every ‘fact’ he asserted in his diatribe was simply wrong. He did us all a favour not only by exposing the depths of his prejudices but of revealing his cavernous ignorance. The most disturbing aspect of his speech was the demonstration of how an individual ...
Herding Cats
It’s a task akin to herding cats. Getting all State and Territory governments to agree on an Australian energy policy while aligning climate change sceptics with those demanding higher emission reduction targets, seems to be beyond the capacity of our current crop of decision makers. While the “no sniping, no undermining” Tony Abbott and his disciples ...