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Sleeper cells and Australian election victory

By Spencer D Gear PhD

This article was first published as ‘Sleeper cells and Australian election victory’ in On Line Opinion (21 May 2019).

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(Photo Scott Morrison family, courtesy frasercoastchronicle.com.au)

The Prime Minister gave credit to ‘quiet Australians‘ for his shock election victory on 18 May 2019. Pollsters predicted a Labor win. They got it wrong – very wrong.

Who could the ‘quiet Australians’ be? I’m not thinking of the ones mentioned by Morrison: Those with hopes of getting jobs, apprenticeships, and starting businesses. There are those with personal aspirations to form a family, buy a house, labour to provide for kids, and to save for retirement.

They sure were ones who spoke at the ballot box, after viewing the policies of the two major parties.

The forgotten quiet ones

Remember Morrison’s statements about dealing with the drought? He was in Albury, the birth place of the Liberal Party in September 2018, addressing the Liberal Party: ‘I do pray for that rain. And I’d encourage others who believe in the power of prayer to pray for that rain and to pray for our farmers. Please do that’. Were these among the quiet ones?

Was it a ‘miracle’?

Morrison said he ‘always believed in miracles‘ as he gave his victory speech at Liberal HQ on the evening of 18 May 2019. He added: ‘I would like to wish [Bill Shorten] and Chloe, and his family all the best, and God’s blessing’, concluding with, ‘We are an amazing country of amazing people. God bless Australia’.

Was it a ‘miracle‘ win, as ScoMo labelled it?

Yes it was in this sense: ‘A remarkable event or development that brings very welcome consequences’ for the Coalition government (Oxford English Dictionary). However, I don’t see it as ‘an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency’ (OED) like Jesus’ resurrection.

The God factor was included in ScoMo’s blessing on the Shorten couple and exhorting God to bless Australia? Do we deserve blessing or his chastisement?

The sleeper cells I’m thinking of were not highlighted in the mass media coverage. They weren’t mentioned in what I heard and read after the voting.

God’s people, some of them elderly, distributed leaflets house-to-house about Labor’s extreme abortion agenda in public hospitals. I know of a couple in their 70s who did this and thought it might be a waste of time. It wasn’t.

The call to prayer

One not-so-quiet Australian was tennis great and pastor of Victory Life Centre, Perth, Margaret Court. In addition to praying through the election campaign period, Margaret and other Christian leaders called Australians to:

(photo courtesy Blue Mountains Gazette)

…gather in praise and worship on the evening of Friday 17 May, on the eve of our election day. Encourage the people in your networks to get together and hold a combined church praise and worship night to declare that God is on the throne in our nation. ‘Your Kingdom Come! Your will be done by us in Australia, as in heaven’.

She previously wrote to ScoMo:

God impressed on my heart – that once the election date was announced, we should stand together and call 21 days of Pray[er] & Fasting. Through the Bible, Prayer and Fasting has (sic) impacted the course of history and adjusted the spiritual course of Nations. I’m reminded of – ‘If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land’ (2 Chronicles 7:14).

Let our united prayer be: ‘Thank you Father that the righteous rule in our Nation of Australia, in Jesus Name. Amen’.

On 15 April 2019, the Australian Prayer Network began 30 days of prayer for the nation and the 2019 election. This prayer included ‘asking God’s forgiveness for where we have in the past failed to collectively pray for our national leaders and Government’.

These are some of the ‘quiet Australians’ who were praying and acting behind the scene, seeking God’s action for his intervention in the government of the nation.

Freedom of religion

The agenda of the ALP and the Greens threatened freedom of speech and freedom of religion. Only 5 days out from the election, The Catholic Weekly, warned: ‘ALP-Greens win would be a disaster for Catholics‘. Why?

The ALP policy pamphlet A Fair Go for LGBTIQ Australianssigned by Bill Shorten does not equivocate when it states ‘A Shorten Labor Government will amend the Sex Discrimination Act to remove the exemptions that permit religious schools to discriminate against students and staff on the basis of their sexuality or gender identity’….

There is also no doubt what the Greens Party intends to do if it forms an alliance with an incoming ALP Government. Its policy also denies religious freedom when it states, ‘The Greens will protect LGBTIQ+ rights in law, through a Charter of Rights and by legislating to remove religious exemptions in federal and state anti-discrimination laws’.

After the election, this led The Age (20 May 2019) to report that ‘Christian leaders say religious freedom was among factors that influenced voters‘.

Before the election (8 May), Martyn Isles, managing director of the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) confirmed the:

(image courtesy Eternity News)

…ALP’s legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus [stated] a Shorten government would remove important legal protections for religious schools.

‘This is out of step with what Tanya Plibersek said last week when she seemed to show a willingness to support religious schools’ right to teach their values, and employ staff that faithfully represent those values,’ commented Mr Iles. ‘Religious freedom for schools remains a critical issue for millions of Australians, and so far, it has been sidelined from the election campaign’, he stated.

Labor and the Greens should have seen this coming. They were warned before the election, ‘Parents of Christian school students urged to vote for religious freedom‘. SBS reported 329 Christian schools had sent a pamphlet to parents whose children attended those schools. Mark Spencer, Christian Schools Australia national executive officer, told SBS News, ‘We have to be very careful, we’ve provided the policy information and it’s really up to parents to work out which parties are going to protect their values’.

Mr Spencer said this was an unprecedented move and ‘we have certainly ramped it up a lot because this issue is so important to us’.

SBS reported on the alarm by Christian schools last year of proposed change ‘to the Sex Discrimination Act to prevent religious schools being able to expel students or sack staff on the basis of their sexuality’.

If ‘millions of Australians’ were concerned about this, the ALP and the Greens should have seen it coming and so deserve to lose because of policies that discriminated against religious values.

Who brings a government to power?

In the New Testament, Romans 13:1 states ‘Everyone must submit to governing authorities. For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God’.

It is God who raises governments and tears others down. If the values of governments clash with God’s law, Christians need to pursue what Peter and the apostles did: ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority’ (Acts 5:29).

These could be some of the sleeper cell issues that led to defeat in Labor’s unlosable election.

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Assisted suicide saves lives??

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(image courtesy FIC Blog)

By Spencer Gear PhD

Over the years I’ve read some interesting, provocative, and even strange reasons, for supporting euthanasia and assisted suicide. This one took the cake:

1. Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save lives

The full statement was:

Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save lives: old but healthy people will no longer decide to fly to Switzerland or jump off a cliff while they can, because they could be assured by someone who loves them that if in future they are in great pain or disability then they could be “helped to die” within Australia.[1]

This is one of the weirdest statements from this person. How should I respond?

That’s strange logic – killing someone through assisted suicide will save lives!

1.1 Who has the right to give and take life?

According to Acts 17:24-25 (NIRV), “He is the God who made the world. He also made everything in it. He is the Lord of heaven and earth…. He himself gives life and breath to all people”.[2]

That’s clear enough. The Lord God gives life and breath to all people. He does not use euthanasia to “save lives”. Human beings use assisted suicide.

First Timothy 6:13 states, “God gives life to everything”. Therefore, whose right is it to end life? It does not belong to the Dr to euthanise people. Let them die a ‘natural’ death and allow the sovereign God to deal with the time of death.

I’ve just sat with a wife at hospital beside her dying aged husband. The Drs thought he would die on Tuesday but God’s timing was Thursday morning. Nobody else has the right to end life. It is God’s right to give life to everyone and it is his right to determine the time of death.

I’m saddened that this person justified assisted suicide which is against the rights of the Lord God Almighty.

One of God’s rights is found in His omniscience (His attribute) – He’s knows everything about all human beings and the universe. The Lord God’s “eyes saw my body even before it was formed. You planned how many days I would live. You wrote down the number of them in your book before I had lived through even one of them” (Psalm 139:16).

Therefore, it is God’s right to give and to take life [3]

2. Why do people advocate euthanasia and assisted suicide?

Verywellhealth lists these as reasons to support the right-to-die with dignity movement:

A patient’s death brings him or her the end of pain and suffering.

Patients have an opportunity to die with dignity, without fear that they will lose their physical or mental capacities.

The overall healthcare financial burden on the family is reduced.

Patients can arrange for final goodbyes with loved ones.

If planned for in advance, organs can be harvested and donated.

With physician assistance, patients have a better chance of experiencing a painless and less traumatic death (death with dignity).

Patients can end pain and suffering when there is no hope for relief.

Some say assisted death with dignity is against the Hippocratic Oath, however, the statement “first do no harm” can also apply to helping a patient find the ultimate relief from pain through death.

Medical advances have enabled life beyond what nature might have allowed, but that is not always in the best interest of the suffering patient with no hope of recovery.

A living will, considered a guiding document for a patient’s healthcare wishes, can provide clear evidence of a patient’s decisions regarding end-of-life care (Torrey 2018).

All of the above points provide support for human autonomy at the time of death.

This is not the expression of a godly, Christian worldview but a secular, agnostic perspective. God is not mentioned in this list. There is not even a nod to the teaching by Elkanah’s wife, Hannah, in the OT: ‘The Lord is a God who knows everything. He judges everything people do…. The Lord causes people to die. He also gives people life. He brings people down to the grave. He also brings people up from death (1 Sam 2: 3b, 6).

The Christian way of death is summarised by John Piper:

Jesus put it this way: “Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground” — meaning, die — “apart from your Father. But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore; you are of much more value than the sparrows” (Matthew 10:29–31). Now, what is the point? The point is, if the time for the death of a tiny bird in a remote forest is of a concern to God and determined by God, how much more will our days be numbered and determined by God with great care and wisdom. In fact, the psalmist says to God, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them” (Psalm 139:16). Which means, [that] the days that God has allotted for [you and me] are already written in a book. They are decided. There aren’t any extra ones outside the book that slip up on God (Piper 2017).

3. There are good reasons to reject euthanasia and assisted suicide

There are sound reasons to discard voluntary, active euthanasia or assisted suicide legislation through the repeal of the Australian Territories’ legislation.

In my understanding, the case for euthanasia is based on the following:

Intentionally killing or assisting in the killing of innocent human beings.
Repudiation of the doctor-patient relationship that is meant to promote life.
It flies in the face of the medical advances made in the treatment of pain and is at odds with compassionate methods of care.
It does not fully consider the historical examples that show euthanasia cannot be legislatively controlled (e.g. Holland, Belgium).
It rests on presuppositions that do not respect human life.
It plays God. Only God has the right to give and take life.
Human beings are not animals, but unique beings made in the image of God.
Ethically, it rests on self-defeating assertions, i.e. it can introduce dishonesty and deception into the doctor-patient relationship. Is the doctor one who kills or one who facilitates life?
It is not in the patient’s or society’s best interests.
It eliminates the sufferer rather than treating the suffering.

Effective palliative care is available in the home and the hospital.

Opinion polls are an unreliable indicator of support for euthanasia.

For an exposition of these points, see my submission on the 2008 Bill, number 386,

4. Conclusion

This discussion has moved from support for assisted suicide, ‘Decriminalising assisted suicide will only save lives’, to giving human beings the autonomous right to decide how they will die.

Reasons were given why secular, pro-death people support euthanasia and assisted suicide through promoting autonomy of the individual. By contrast, those who reject euthanasia and assisted suicide see the dangers of this legislation (based on historical precedent) and refuse to play God.

5. Works consulted

Leyonhjelm, D 2018. Assisted suicide deal. Online Opinion (online), 9 July. Available at: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=19835 (Accessed 12 July 2018).

Piper, J 2017. Does God Know the Exact Day I Will Die? Desiring God (online), episode 1007, 24 February. Available at: https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/does-god-know-the-exact-day-i-will-die (Accessed 12 July 2018).

Torrey, T 2018. Arguments in Favor of Right-to-Die Legislation. Verywellhealth (online), 4 March. Available at: https://www.verywellhealth.com/arguments-in-favor-of-death-with-dignity-2614852 (Accessed 12 July 2018).

6. Notes

[1] Leyonhjelm 2018. Comment by Yuyutsu, Thursday, 12 July 2018 1:19:48 AM.

[2] Unless otherwise stated, all Bible verses are from the New International Readers’ Version (NIRV).

[3] Leyonhjelm 2018. Comment by OzSpen (by me), Thursday, 12 July 2018 12:34:08 PM.

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One Nation accuses Nationals of stealing its policy

National Party of Australia

(Courtesy Wikipedia and Wikipedia)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

Shouldn’t one political party celebrate when another political party supports its policy?

That’s not what happened when One Nation objected to a policy of the National Party. On the One Nation website in July 2018, , it stated:

1. National Party Steals Another One Nation Policy – Coal Fired Power Stations

6 July, 2018/in National, Pauline Hanson /

Again the National Party have (sic) tried stealing another One Nation policy.

During the last sitting of Parliament, I put to the Government that North Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria all need a new coal fired power station built to drive electricity prices down.

I was told NO quite soon after that discussion took place.

I wasn’t shy about my plans either – I made sure people in Canberra knew I wanted them. Clearly that’s where the National Party picked up the idea and ran with it today in the Australian.

Perhaps the National Party can come and have a meeting with me and I’ll share a some additional policies they can help me drive.

2 Comments published

There were 11 comments published after at the conclusion of this article / news release. All of them were in favour of what Pauline wrote above.

3. Comment censored

Then I sent this reply on Sunday night, 8 July 2018 at 11:57pm, it provided evidence to contradict what Pauline Hanson’s One Nation wrote above. I stated:

Pauline,

You are talking sense and I support your policy of new publicly owned coal-fired power stations. Congratulations on supporting this move.

However, some of your facts were false.

You state that you made it known in Canberra you supported new coal-fired power stations. Then you added: ‘Clearly that’s where the National Party picked up the idea and ran with it today in the Australian’.

This is false! Do you know who promoted coal-fired power stations in Qld? Who built the existing publicly owned coal-fired power stations here?

Image result for photo Joh Bjelke-Petersen public domain (Photo Joh Bjelke-Petersen, courtesy Flickr)

You are copying what the National Party premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen, did and Bob Katter supported it. It was Katter who was engaged in arranging for coal to be delivered from Blackwater to the Gladstone power station. My understanding is that half of the power from coal was generated during the Bjelke-Petersen era.

Who is going to the Longman by-election with policies in support of coal-fired, publicly owned power stations? The Australian Country Party, The Labour-DLP, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

The Nationals didn’t steal the coal-fired power station idea from One Nation. Could One Nation have adapted it from the Nationals of the time when Joh was Premier of Qld, 1968 to 1987.

I check the One Nation website again at 6:57pm, Tuesday, 10 July 2018 and my comment had appeared HERE. Could this publication have been assisted by …

3.1 A nudge

Since my comment had not been published by 9.04pm on Monday, 9 July 2018, I sent this gentle prod of inquiry, ‘I added to the discussion last night (Sunday) but now (24 hours later) it has not been published. Why has my post been censored?’

Could it be that Pauline’s One Nation does not like being corrected?

4. The truth: The Nationals had the example of previous Nationals to follow

As indicated in my comment above, the Nationals were given the example by the Joh Bjelke-Petersen government in Qld to support coal-fired power stations.

Pauline seems to have sparked discussion in Canberra and the Nationals have supported this policy, which they did in their statement to The Australian newspaper.

Pauline should be giving thanks that the Nationals are supportive of this coal-fired power station policy. But no, Pauline seems to want to gain the credit for the policy. It was a policy that was implemented by the Nationals in Qld.

4.1 The Nationals support coal-fired power stations

Related image (image courtesy Carbon Tracker Initiative)

ABC News, Brisbane Qld reported:

Tony Abbott has attached himself to the National Party’s push for government-owned and funded coal-fired power stations.

The Nationals are not convinced the National Energy Guarantee (NEG) will reduce power prices as much as they would like, and they have a proposal for the Prime Minister, which includes building new power stations and funding existing traditional ones (Barbour 2018).

As of 10 July 2018, 11.19am, The National Party did not have this power station policy on its website. See policies under ‘Our Plan’.

5. Conclusion

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation claim that ‘again the National Party have (sic) tried stealing another One Nation policy’ is false.

When I made a comment about One Nation’s factual errors in the news release above, it was not published on the website until 2 days after I posted it.

ABC News reported that there is a push by the Nationals for government owned and funded coal-fired power stations.

6. Works consulted

Barbour, L 2018. Why some Nationals want Tony Abbott to stay in the dark on the National Energy Guarantee. ABC News (online), Brisbane, Qld., 5 July. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-05/tony-abbott-tries-to-form-alliance-with-nationals-on-neg/9940136?section=analysis (Accessed 10 July 2018).

Graphic abortion images removed from Queensland submission

26 Week Abortion

(photo 26 week abortion, courtesy AbortionNO)

By Spencer D. Gear PhD

I made a 15-page submission to the Queensland ‘Abortion Law Reform (Woman’s Right to Choose) Amendment Bill 2016 that was submitted in June 2016. It was published online as submission No 455 at: http://www.parliament.qld.gov.au/documents/committees/HCDSDFVPC/2016/AbortionLR-WRC-AB2016/submissions/455.pdf (Accessed 16 July 2016).

The Bill is designed to change the law to decriminalise the killing of the unborn through abortion. My emphasis was to retain the law as it exists.

You will note in my published submission online that the Parliamentary office has chosen to:

A. Blank out certain portions of my submission

Here is how the censorship appeared. This table with a picture was blacked out.

5. This will be what will happen for many Qld children if MPs CHOOSE to reject the Bill.

You will choose this kind of life over death!

B. This also was blanked out

7. This will be what happens to unborn Qld children if you CHOOSE to pass this Bill.

C. What did I send in my submission?

5. This will be what will happen for many Qld children if MPs CHOOSE to reject the Bill.

You will choose this kind of life over death!

(photo courtesy PublicDomainPictures.net)

D. This also was sent in the submission

7. This will be what happens to unborn Qld children if you CHOOSE to pass this Bill.

(image courtesy Abortion Truth)

(image courtesy 100 abortion pictures)

E. Conclusion

I am left to conclude that the graphic contrast between a newly born and growing child when compared with aborted remains of 2 children were too graphic for the government bureaucrats to include. Or could I be more accommodating and concede that the guidelines for submissions prevented the use of graphics? This especially applied to photos that would show the existence of a human being who was slaughtered by abortion and the unsightly remains that clearly demonstrate the nature of abortion.

Here’s the contrast again of life for children and the killing of children in the womb (abortion):

Image result for Newborn Baby on an Arm public domain

(photo courtesy PublicDomainPictures.net)

(photo courtesy www.abortiontruth.com)

Queensland Senator bullying Queensland MPs

(image courtesy clker.com)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

How do you think a politician would push her views on abortion? I wrote to her on 5 November 2015 by email to expose what I understood she was doing. The title of my email was, ‘Quit your histrionics[1] and bullying’:

I read the article in the Brisbane Times (2 November 2015) about what you are doing to Queensland State MPs, ‘Greens Senator Larissa Waters wants Queensland MPs to show position on abortion‘.

Please quit this action of bullying Qld MPs. They are big boys and girls who are capable of thinking through the abortion issues themselves.

We already have provision for doctors to abort if there is physical or mental danger to the mother.

It is important that children be protected from conception. You obviously don’t give a hoot about that view. It’s important to safeguard children from murder while they are in the womb. There are life and death reasons for keeping the Qld abortion laws as they are.

It is time for you, a federal Qld senator, to remove yourself from wanting to influence State MPs like this and using the mass media to push your view. What you are doing is engaging in histrionic bullying of MPs with your public demands.[2]

How do you think her office would reply to this kind of personal email from me?

A. Red herring reply from a Senator’s office

I want to commend the Senator’s office for replying to my email because many of the Senators I contact do not get back to me at all. It’s as if my writing to them, for whom I have voted, is a waste of time. However, how did the person in the senator’s office reply? Here it is:

Thank you for contacting Senator Larissa Waters regarding abortion.

Senator Waters respects your concerns and acknowledges your perspective on this issue.

The Australian Greens have been, and continue to be, strong supporters of women’s right to access free, safe and legal termination services. The Greens believe it’s unacceptable that so many Australian women still struggle to access this basic health service, which is why we will continue to work to improve women’s access to termination services.

Thank you again for contacting Senator Waters to express your views.

Regards,

[staff member’s name]

Office of Senator Larissa Waters [3]

Notice what she missed from my email of 5 November to Senator Waters? She omitted one of my primary emphases that I placed in the email title, ‘Quit your histrionics and bullying’. Not once in this reply did the staff member mention my accusation of bullying of Qld MPs – not once. She avoided it to push Senator Waters’ pro-abortion agenda.

(Herrings kippered by smoking and salting until they turn reddish-brown, i.e. a “red herring”. Prior to refrigeration kipper was known for being strongly pungent; courtesy Wikipedia)

By avoiding the topic I raised of histrionic bullying of MPs, Senator Waters’ office has practised a red herring logical fallacy. What is that? The Nizkor Project explains:

A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic. This sort of “reasoning” has the following form:

1. Topic A is under discussion.

2. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A).

3. Topic A is abandoned.

This sort of “reasoning” is fallacious because merely changing the topic of discussion hardly counts as an argument against a claim (The Nizkor Project 2012. S v red herring).

Therefore, I responded to Catherine Garner via email:[4]

Your response is a red herring logical fallacy. You did not address the issue I raised of Senator Waters bullying Qld MPs about their views on abortion. Please quit it. Bullying in all its forms should not be promoted, let alone practised, by Senator Waters.

1. Politicians among least trusted

Your reply endorses fallacious reasoning. No wonder in 2011, reported by The Sydney Morning Herald, it was found that ‘this year’s Reader’s Digest survey on the most-trusted professions sandwiches politicians between car salesmen and telemarketers, in the bottom three out of a list of 45 vocations’. Politicians were 44 on the list of 45′ (The Sydney Morning Herald 2011). Sadly, journalists were competing with politicians near the bottom of that list at No. 40. In fact, sex workers are at #39, meaning that politicians are less trusted than prostitutes.[5]

How was Senator Waters tackling the views of Queensland MPs on abortion?

B. Politician bullying other politicians

(photo of Senator Larissa Waters, courtesy Wikipedia)

This federal Greens’ senator for Queensland, Larissa Waters was bullying Qld MPs with some of these emphases, as reported by the Brisbane Times:[6]

1. She was asking Queensland State MPs to declare their position on decriminalising abortion. Why? It was a component of her campaign to expose what she considers is Qld’s ‘outdated law’ that she wants changed. To me, this seems like a predicted technique. She is pushing for a change in Qld State legislation. So what better way to do this than to unmask the politicians’ perspectives on abortion so that she could then attempt to debunk or parade their values for possible ridicule or exposure in their electorates?

However, she is a federal politician and should be leaving State politics to the state political sphere. This doesn’t prevent her from expressing her views. However, she did it in a very public sphere through this article in the Brisbane Times.[7]

2. This was associated with a report in the Brisbane Times that Qld women were travelling interstate to obtain abortions (Mitchell-Whitington 2015). This article claimed Qld women wanting abortions were breaking the law by going south for the procedure. ‘In 2014, Children by Choice referred 77 women interstate, with similar organisations making the same type of referrals so that figure is probably much higher’, claimed Professor Caroline de Costa of James Cook University School of the College of Medicine and Dentistry.[8] De Costa’s contention was that ‘extensive abortion “tourism” from all Australian states to Victoria and overseas (is occurring) in the face of barriers to access to abortion’.

So this Brisbane Times article garnered a pro-abortion response from a Professor of Medicine. Where was the balance? I did not find a right of response from Cherish Life, a right-to-life organisation.

3. This is how Waters is bullying Qld MPs. It was reported that ‘Larissa Waters has begun campaigning to decriminalise the procedure [of abortion] in the sunshine state, with plans to publish where Queensland’s MPs stand on the issue’ (Remeikis 2015). This kind of threat amounts to bullying by intimidation, in my view.

4. This article stated, ‘”The fact that abortion is still a crime in Queensland creates stigma and legal uncertainty for women and for doctors,” Ms Waters said in the letter to the state’s MPs’. So Waters is pushing the stigma and legal side to try to get MPs to declare their hand on abortion so that she will shame them (this is how I see it) about ‘the dearth of access to abortion in Queensland’ (Remeikis 2015).

5. The bullying by shaming continues: ‘Our outdated laws, are hurting Queensland women’. This is guilt by association. If Qld MPs support the current abortion laws they are endorsing old fashioned laws that are hurting women, according to Waters.

6. The guilt by association and bullying continued: ‘Ms Waters said polling shows four out of five voters supported decriminalising abortion, with the Australian Medical Association of Queensland calling the current law “a barrier to a doctor’s first duty – best patient care”’. Not one statistic was quoted by the Brisbane Times or Ms Waters to support this assertion of the percentage of Queenslanders who support abortion. However, elsewhere these are the polling statistics that were not 80% in favour of abortion:

ALMOST two-thirds of Queenslanders support the decriminalisation of abortion, according to an exclusive Galaxy opinion poll.

The poll of 800 voters, conducted exclusively for The Courier-Mail, found 64 per cent believed abortion should be legalised, while 31 per cent disagreed. Five per cent were uncommitted (Miles 2009, emphasis in original).

A year later it was reported:

Image result for clipart research public domain

(image courtesy clipartpal.com)

New independent polling by Galaxy Research reveals Queensland voters are evenly split on whether to “decriminalise abortion”, despite widespread media coverage of the recent Cairns court trial and contrary to recent claims by the pro-abortion lobby that there is 90 per cent support.

The poll, taken after the week-long trial, shows a cautious attitude towards abortion with 29 per cent saying they would not allow abortion “at any stage of pregnancy”. This makes a total of 74 per cent of Queenslanders who would not permit abortion beyond the first trimester, or not at all.

Even support for first-trimester abortions is qualified because half (49 per cent) of Queensland voters do not support abortion for non-medical reasons (that is, social or financial reasons). Of course, it is deemed common knowledge that the majority of the annual 14,000+ abortions in Queensland are carried out for non-medical reasons, something which may shock the general public if they knew.

Catapulting the cause for abortion law reform into media headlines was the trial of a young couple in Cairns during October 12-14. After only one hour of deliberation the jury found them not guilty of the two charges: procuring one’s own abortion and supplying a drug to procure an abortion (McCormack 2010, emphasis in original).

Commenting on this poll, the Australian Christian Lobby stated:

“Despite activist organisation GetUp! reportedly claiming that decriminalising abortion has 90% public support, this new poll shows that 74% of Queensland voters are opposed to abortion past the first trimester,” ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said. “Another important finding is that almost everybody (94%) believes that a woman should receive free independent counseling to enable a fully informed decision. Three quarters of respondents (77%) believed that abortion can harm the mental and physical health of a woman.

“The poll also found that 29% of respondents did not support abortion at any stage of a pregnancy, and that nearly half of those surveyed (49%) said they did not support abortion for non-medical reasons. This is particularly noteworthy considering that the vast majority of abortions carried out in Australia today are not for medical reasons, but for purely for financial or social reasons.

“There is clearly no consensus that abortion laws should be changed except to introduce better safeguards for women such as independent counseling, cooling-off periods and parental consent for girls under 16,” Mr Wallace said (Australian Christian Lobby 2010).

A 2008 survey reported in The Medical Journal of Australia came to different conclusions. It was ‘an anonymous online survey of 1050 Australians aged 18 years or older (stratified by sex, age and location) using contextualised questions, conducted between 28 and 31 July 2008’ and reached the conclusion that there was,

a high level of support for access to early abortion; 87% of respondents indicated that abortion should be lawful in the first trimester (61% unconditionally and 26% depending on the circumstances). In most of the clinical and social circumstances described in our survey, a majority of respondents indicated that doctors should not face professional sanctions for performing abortion after 24 weeks’ gestation.

Conclusions: Our data show that a majority of Australians support laws which enable women to access abortion services after 24 weeks’ gestation, and that support varies depending on circumstances. Simple yes/no polls may give a misleading picture of public opinion (de Crespigny et al 2010).

However, this study did admit that ‘late abortion is especially controversial, although less than 2% of abortions occur at 20 weeks or later. Few data support the belief that Australians strongly oppose women’s access to late abortion, while surveys in the United Kingdom and United States do report opposition’ (de Crespigny et al 2010).

C. Abortion ‘tourism’ is pathetic publicity

passenger airplane Professor de Costa of James Cook School of Medicine used a wretched designation for the travelling to another city to have an abortion. She called it, ‘extensive abortion “tourism”… in the face of barriers to access to abortion’ (Mitchell-Whitington 2015). Sarah Colyer (2015) for the Australian Medical Association also used the language of ‘abortion tourism’ and cited Professor de Costa in her article, along with others. In a Media Release for the Australian Medical Association on 26 October 2015, Professor de Costa again repeated the offensive language of ‘tourism’ to obtain an abortion because of the divergence in legislation across Australia: ‘The result of these differences is continuing and extensive abortion “tourism” from all Australian states to

Victoria and overseas in the face of barriers to access to abortion’ (de Costa 2015).

1. ‘Medical tourism’ in action

I find it abominable that any medical doctor or professor could call the killing of an unborn child in abortion to be an example of tourism in action. Wouldn’t travelling interstate to murder somebody be a better description of what goes on?

How do you think others see this view of ‘tourism’? One comment to Colyer (2015) was: ‘The use of the word “tourism” in this article is in the same context as “medical tourism” – where people travel to have procedures or treatment that are not accessible to them locally – either due to availability or cost. The term does not intend to trivialise the treatment, but to describe the act of travelling’ (comment by Sue Ieraci). Another’s response was more provocative, ‘“Tourism’”??? Really???? I find this both an inflammatory and demeaning term to be used in the exploration of a significant health issue’ (Nicole L in Colyer 2015). How does a doctor of conscience with a different view to that of de Costa and others deal with abortion?

I work in Victoria and am always concerned about the welfare and rights of both mother and baby when a woman with an unwanted pregnancy presents. It happens to me very rarely now as I get older.

Unless the mother’s viability is in real danger and there therefore exists the mother’s right to act in self defence of her life, I will not be part of killing anyone. Therefore, I refuse to be involved in a referral for abortion to someone who is not of the same moral belief. i.e. I will break the law in Victoria where my right as a citizen to act according to my conscience has been legislated away as a result of the unfortunate alliance of left wing Victorian Labor politicians of the early 2000s. Emily’s List is a very powerful lobby group in the Labor Party who have engineered legislation which allows the legal killing of babies while in utero until birth. What barbarity! (Paul Jenkinson in Colyer 2015).

I’m with you, Nicole. To describe travelling to have a procedure to kill an unborn child as ‘tourism’ is not only demeaning and abominable but profane,[9] in my view. The abuse of a life given by God (the child in the womb) through killing is vulgar and wicked to redefine as tourism, even medical tourism. What is a nation coming to where a professor of medicine is prepared to publicly go on record as regarding murder of an unborn child as tourism?

This does get down to worldview and scientific issues regarding the commencement of human life.

D. Conclusion

This article commenced with a Qld example of a Qld federal Senator, Larissa Waters, who was pressuring (bullying was my language) Qld MPs for their views on abortion so that she could pressure them to decriminalise abortion in Qld.

What was her purpose? She wanted to prevent ‘medical tourism’ by which a pregnant woman would travel to another state or territory to have her abortion – the killing of her unborn child.

The Brisbane-based ‘Children by Choice’, states that the organisation ‘is proud to have the support of our three patrons – Senators Claire Moore, Sue Boyce and Larissa Waters’. So that nails Senator Waters’ colours to the mast. She’s a promoter of abortion and her bullying Qld MPs to obtain their views on abortion seems to be to pressure them into providing evidence that her pro-abortion side can use to manipulate Qld laws for pro-abortion change to decriminalise abortion.

I find the tactic abominable that she has used.

Works consulted

Australian Christian Lobby 2010. Qld polling challenges pro-abortionist claims (online), 29 October. Available at: http://www.acl.org.au/2010/10/qld-polling-challenges-pro-abortionist-claims/ (Accessed 10 November 2015).

Colyer, S 2015. Call to end “abortion tourism”. MJAInSight[10] (online), 26 October. Available at: https://www.mja.com.au/insight/2015/41/call-end-abortion-tourism (Accessed 11 November 2015).

de Costa, C 2015. Advances in fetal medicine outstrip abortion law reform. The Medical Journal of Australia: Media Release (online), 26 October. Available at: https://www.scimex.org/__data/assets/file/0007/57355/Abortion-Laws_MJA_Media-release.pdf (Accessed 11 November 2015)

de Crespigny, L J; Wilkinson, D J; Douglas, T; Textor, M & Savulescu, J 2010. Australian attitudes to early and late abortion. The Medical Journal of Australia (online), 193 (1), 9-12. Available at: https://www.mja.com.au/journal/2010/193/1/australian-attitudes-early-and-late-abortion (Accessed 10 November 2015).[11]

McCormack, L 2010. QUEENSLAND: 12 per cent swing in favour of protecting unborn. News Weekly, November 13. Available at: http://newsweekly.com.au/article.php?id=4491 (Accessed 10 November 2015).

Merriam-Webster Dictionary 2015. Available at: http://www.merriam-webster.com/ (Accessed 11 November 2015).

Miles, J 2009. Two thirds support abortion law change: poll. The Courier-Mail, September 15. Available at: http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/two-thirds-support-abortion-law-change-poll/story-e6freon6-1225773035076 (Accessed 10 November 2015).

Mitchell-Whitington, A 2015. Outdated Queensland abortion laws creating a ‘tourism’ of women travelling south. Brisbane Times (online), October 26. Available at: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/outdated-queensland-abortion-laws-creating-a-tourism-of-women-travelling-south-20151023-gkhbe6 (Accessed 11 November 2015).

Oxford Dictionaries 2015. Oxford University Press. Available at: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/ (Accessed 11 November 2015).

Remeikis, A 2015. Greens Senator Larissa Waters wants Queensland MPs to show position on abortion. Brisbane Times (online), November 2. Available at: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/greens-senator-larissa-waters-wants-queensland-mps-to-show-position-on-abortion-20151101-gko8sy.html (Accessed 10 November 2015).

The Nizkor Project 1991-2012. Fallacies (online). Available at: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/ (Accessed 11 November 2015).

The Sydney Morning Herald 2011. Australia’s most trusted: sex workers trump pollies in public confidence stakes (online), June 22. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/national/australias-most-trusted-sex-workers-trump-pollies-in-public-confidence-stakes-20110622-1ge82.html (Accessed 10 November 2015).

Notes

[1] ‘Histrionic’ means being ‘excessively theatrical or dramatic in character or style’ (Oxford dictionaries 2015. S v histrionic):

[2] I sent this to Senator Waters’ email address: [email protected].

[3] The staff member sent this email on 10 November 2015 from email: [email protected].

[4] I do not make my personal email available on this ‘Truth Challenge’ website.

[5] I did not include this last sentence in my email to Waters’ office.

[6] Remeikis (2015).

[7] Ibid.

[8] This professorship is confirmed in the MJA InSight (Colyer 2015).

[9] I am using ‘profane’ as meaning ‘to treat (something sacred) with abuse, irreverence, or contempt: desecrate; to debase by a wrong, unworthy, or vulgar use’ (Merriam-Webster 2015. S v profane).

[10] This is a Medical Journal of Australia publication.

[11] There was no pagination for this online edition.

Please do not support same-sex marriage

(courtesy dreamstime)

(courtesy PublicDomainPictures.net)

By Spencer D Gear PhD

In 2014-2015, Senator David Leyonhjelm in the Australian federal Senate has been promoting a Bill to legalise same-sex marriage (with support from other politicians). It was reported: ‘Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjelm introduces same-sex marriage bill’ (The Sydney Morning Herald, November 26, 2014). The Sydney Morning Herald also provided information on ‘the surprise visitor [Senator Cory Bernardi] at David Leyonhjelm’s gay marriage press conference’ (SMH March 19, 2015). What has happened to the Bill? Leyonhjelm told Sky News that he expected the Bill to be debated in federal parliament in 2016. See, ‘Gay marriage vote in 2016 says Leyonhjelm’ (Sky News, 2 June 2015).

I wrote to the Queensland Senators to provide evidence why they should not support homosexual marriage. I wrote as a Queensland elector, one who has been a counsellor and/or counselling manager for 34 years, and someone who is not a homophobe.

Reasons not to support homosexual marriage

I urged the Senators not to support or promote this legislation for these reasons:

1. While there have been widows and single parents since the beginning of time, the marriage of a man and woman has been the norm to have the potential to produce children naturally. To change this is to change a necessary fundamental of society.

2. To go down the road of same-sex marriage would be a potentially dangerous social experiment in Australia for the following reasons:

One of those is the impact on children born to surrogates and then parented by a same-sex couple. Too often, the man who donated the sperm or the woman who donated the ovum is not known to the child. Article 7 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child states: ‘The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and. as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents’. All children, wherever possible, have the right to know and they need both mother and father. Such is not possible with many homosexual couples where there are children.

3. All is not well with children from some homosexual parents. On 19 March 2015, The Courier-Mail published the article, ‘Heather Barwick, the daughter of lesbians, against gay marriage, defends Dolce & Gabbana’. Part of what she wrote was:

“I’m writing to you because I’m letting myself out of the closet: I don’t support gay marriage. But it might not be for the reasons that you think. It’s not because you’re gay. I love you, so much. It’s because of the nature of the same-sex relationship itself,” she said. “Same-sex marriage and parenting withholds either a mother or father from a child while telling him or her that it doesn’t matter. That it’s all the same. But it’s not. A lot of us, a lot of your kids, are hurting. My father’s absence created a huge hole in me, and I ached every day for a dad. I loved my mum’s partner, but another mum could never have replaced the father I lost.”

‘Growing up, and even into my 20s, I supported and advocated for gay marriage. It’s only with some time and distance from my childhood that I’m able to reflect on my experiences and recognise the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had on me,” she said. “It’s only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting”.

(Male same-sex couple with a child, courtesy Wikipedia)

A new study of children raised by homosexual parents by sociologist Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin reverses the conventional academic understanding that such children are not at a disadvantage when compared to children raised by a married mother and father. The article in the journal, Social Science Research, has found that ‘the children of homosexuals did worse (or, in the case of their own sexual orientation, were more likely to deviate from the societal norm) on 77 out of 80 outcome measures. (The only exceptions: children of “gay fathers” were more likely to vote; children of lesbians used alcohol less frequently; and children of “gay fathers” used alcohol at the same rate as those in intact biological families)’.[1]

This newer study contradicts earlier research which was reported in, ‘Children of same-sex couples thriving: study’ (The Sydney Morning Herald, April 6, 2013).

Therefore, the same-sex relationship, even in marriage, does not have the same dynamics as those for the man-woman relationship and may have detrimental consequences on children and our society as the following points illustrate.

4. The rectum is not designed for sexual penetration; the vagina is. Anal sex is a high risk sexual activity. One of the many hazards is the vulnerability of the tissues to tearing and bleeding. Damage can be done to the sphincter muscles that may lead to incontinence and rectal prolapse. There is a high level of organisms that may cause disease in the rectum. Do you want these medical issues to be added to the already overloaded Medicare system?

5. Some research has shown that the risk for transmission of HIV is higher for anal sex than for vaginal sex. This report from 2008, “Inequitable Impact: The HIV/AIDS epidemic among gay and bisexual men and other men who have sex with men in Massachusetts“, demonstrates the increased HIV rate among MSM (men having sex with men) in Massachusetts

6. Please read this assessment by Brian Camenker in 2008 of “What same-sex marriage has done to Massachusetts: It’s far worse than most people realize“. Examine the impact in Massachusetts on education in schools right down to the primary school level. Observe how it influences public health, increased domestic violence, business, the legal profession, adoption of children, Government mandates, the public square and the mass media.

(diagram anal cancer, stage 1, courtesy Wikipedia)

7. The anal cancer problem. ‘For HIV-positive Gay Men, the risk is even further elevated. In a recent meta-analysis of all studies describing anal cancer incidence in Gay Men living with HIV, it was reported that anal cancer incidence increased to 78-100 per 100,000 per year in reports published after 1996. These data demonstrate that the incidence of anal cancer is increasing in HIV-positive men, despite the improved general health associated with effective HIV therapies.

The incidence of anal cancer in men and women who identify as heterosexual and have HIV is about 20 per 100,000’ (Submission, June 2014, ‘Anal Cancer-Diagnosis, Monitoring and Management in Sydney and South East Sydney Local Health Districts’, Positive Life NSW).

So, the occurrence in anal cancer for homosexual men is 4-5 times higher than for heterosexual men and women. Marriage is not likely to stop this incidence in the homosexual population, but Senators should be promoting the message in Parliament and to the mass media that the homosexual lifestyle has some deleterious medical consequences.

Another report on anal cancer indicated that ‘in the general population, anal cancer is a rare disease…. Among men who have sex with men (MSM), the incidence of anal cancer is significantly more prevalent and increasing annually’ (National lgbt Cancer Network, ‘Anal Cancer, HIV and Gay/Bisexual Men’, 2013).

8. The foundation of Australia’s healthy democracy and laws has been built on a Christian world view that promotes heterosexual marriage for the health of the nation, which states that ‘a man leaves his father and mother and is united to his wife, and they become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24). Jesus Christ affirmed heterosexuality for the norm of society when he repeated the Genesis mandate, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’ (Matthew 19:5). Paul promoted it in Ephesians 5:31. If Australia moves away from this foundational law for a just and fair family, it will be violating a fundamental of Australia’s national cultural health.

In light of these details, I urge all politicians not to vote for any Bill that legalises homosexual marriage.

Notes:

[1] Mark Regnerus 2012, ‘How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study’, Social Science Research Vol 41, Issue 4, July, pp. 752-770. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0049089X12000610 (Accessed 21 March 2015, emphasis in original).

Stay-at-home mothers given the SHAFT by Australian government

Image result for mother and baby public domain

(courtesy publicdomainpictures.net)

By Spencer D Gear

The stay-at-home mothers get the SHAFT from journalists and MPs too often. These are but a few examples of the discrimination now plaguing some parents (mostly mothers) in Australia.

Australia’s Prime Minister strutting his stuff

‘”Paid parental leave is an important economic reform, very important economic reform, that will boost participation and productivity,” Abbott said this week on ABC’s AM program’.[1]

Tony Abbott: ‘If female participation in Australia were 6 per cent higher, at Canada’s level, GDP would be higher by $25 billion a year”. Imagine how much richer we’d be if we climbed 16 per cent higher to reach Iceland’s level’.[2]

Writers who give stay-at-home mothers the SHAFT

‘The happy wife is a full-time domestic goddess ministering to the every need of her perfect (and good job-holding) husband and her brood of adorable kids’.[3]

‘Currently 58.4% of all adult women participate in the labour force (ie. as workers, or looking for work); compared with 70.9% of adult men. The reason for the gap is because of the decline in participation of women aged 25-34 compared to men’.[4]

‘52.2% OF VOTERS IN AUSTRALIA ARE WOMEN!’[5]

‘International research confirms that 80 per cent of a child’s development happens in the first three years of life. By the age of four, 92 per cent of the brain is formed. If children aren’t being spoken to enough, are not being exposed to different types of stimulus or if they’re spending too much time in front of a television screen, their long term educational outcomes are compromised’.[6]

‘In this country, more than most others in the advanced world, caring for the home and for children is still considered a predominantly female occupation’.[7]

Discrimination against single income families

These are some of the issues relating to how stay-at-home mothers in households are being discriminated against:

Image result for tax public domain (public domain)

‘Single income families get only one tax-free threshold whereas dual income families get two tax-free earnings of $18,000 for each partner’.[8]

‘Another discriminatory policy is Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s Paid Parent Leave which offers mothers in the paid workforce their full salary for six months of maternity leave up to a total of $75,000. The money is to be obtained by a l.5% levy on big companies. Single-income families are discriminated against not only because they do not get the maternity leave payments but also because the tax cuts to big companies to cover the cost of the PPL levy will come out of the pockets of taxpayers’.[9]

‘Mr. Abbott and Mr. Hockey, stop discriminating against mothers and their children on the basis of the mother’s paid-workforce status. Government payments should be focused on the well-being of children and not on preferential treatment for career women. And if there are any disgruntled feminists who object to such equitable policies, just offer them the title of “Duchess” or “Countess”. This should keep them happy for a while’.[10]

Stay-at-home mothers out of fashion

Annabel Crabb wrote for the ABC,

The stay-at-home mum had quite the heyday for a while, but Tony Abbott has turned his back on the band of women his party once championed…. She is the Australian stay-at-home mum.

Of all the fascinating reinventions Tony Abbott has undergone over the years, nothing is quite so intriguing as the way his legislative taste in women has changed. When he was sworn in, pledging to assist “women struggling to balance work and family”, it confirmed what his epiphany on paid parental leave had already suggested; the model Abbott mum is now an employee, not a homemaker.[11]

The Australian Centre for Leadership for Women wrote to the Prime Minister of Australia:

Australia’s employment rate for mothers is the lowest of all the countries in the OECD at 62%. Universal paid parental leave is a critical strategy in encouraging new parents to stay in the workforce and achieving the G20 goal of increasing women’s labour force participation by 25% by 2025.[12]

What pressure is being placed on mothers to get back into the workforce! But at least this group of women was prepared to admit in this letter to the PM:

There is compelling evidence of health and welfare benefits for mothers and babies from a period of postnatal absence from work for the primary caregiver of around six months.

Australian guidelines and the World Health Organisation recommend that infants are fed nothing but breast milk for their first six months of life and continue to be breastfed into their second year. Exclusive breastfeeding ensures that babies receive the full nutritional and development benefits as well as protection against infection and some chronic disease.[13]

Because of this push by government and other interest groups for paid parental leave and the government’s wanting women to get back into the workforce as soon as possible after the birth of a child, I sought guidance from the Scriptures and sent this email to Queensland senators. This is what I wrote:

My letter to Senator about stay-at-home parents

(Senator Barry O’Sullivan, public domain)

I’m concerned over the downgrade given to women (and some men) who choose to remain at home to raise their children. So, I wrote this email letter to Queensland Senator Barry O’Sullivan on 15 May 2015.

I have become disillusioned by what the Coalition federal budgets for 2014 and 2015 are doing to mothers who are not in the out-of-home workforce. You are talking up the need for mothers to get back to work. I’m a long-term family counsellor and I’ve seen the many deleterious consequences of what this does to families.

Do you realise how many stay-at-home mothers there are who could swing an election, especially when the Coalition gives them the SHAFT like it has in the last 2 budgets?

How many stay-at-home mothers are there? I only have access to statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2009-10. This is what I found in a section (chart) on the ‘Employment Status of Women‘:

Notice the second last line where for 2009-10 it indicates that ’employed mothers in couple families with children’ were 66% of mothers. That means that the remainder – 34% of unemployed mothers with children, i.e. stay-at-home mothers – are the ones who have been forgotten. They have been given a kick in the guts by the Abbott-Hockey government.

They could swing an election result.

One-third of mothers are stay-at-home people. But your Coalition government have not been fair with them. They have not been treated with justice in the 2014 and 2015 Coalition budgets.
I urge you to quit this inequity by:

Increasing the Family Tax Benefit to single income families with stay-at-home mothers, and
Making the single-income household equitable. At the moment a single-income family with $120,000 income pays approx. $10,000 more tax than a two-income family what has a joint income of exactly the same amount – $120,000. This could be repeated across various levels of income. THIS IS UNFAIR AND SINGLE INCOME FAMILIES ARE OR SHOULD BE EXASPERATED by what the Coalition is doing to them. THIS VIOLATES FAIRNESS AND JUSTICE. All Aussie families deserve to be treated with equity.
What would be a fairer way? Bring in legislation for income splitting so that, based on this example, the two adults in the household would earn $60,000 each and EACH would benefit from the tax free threshold.
My understanding is that this would provide tax relief for about 800,000 families at a cost of $1.5 billion per year. However, the BIG issue is fairness. Then add,
I urge you to read the research on the impact of a mother’s love on a child. See, ‘How a Mother’s Love Changes a Child’s Brain‘ (Live Science, January 30, 2012). This research found that ‘Nurturing a child early in life may help him or her develop a larger hippocampus, the brain region important for learning, memory and stress responses’.
When will you as a Coalition acknowledge that the uniquely close relationship between a mother and her baby is critical for the baby’s development?

Please tell me what you will do to bring equity into families with a taxation system of fairness to stay-at-home mothers, starting from this budget?

The Senator’s profound response

I was not expecting the kind of solid – even profound – response from Senator O’Sullivan. His email to me on 17 June 2015 from his Toowoomba office stated:

Thank you for seeking my views on same-gender marriage.

As you would be aware, our party has a long standing party position on this issue and we have consistently shared this position with voters. My party’s position is completely in accord with my own personal position.

Keeping in line with LNP policy, I have staunchly told my parliamentary colleagues, fellow party members, media and the public that I will oppose any measures by parliament to alter the timeless definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman.

I believe the strength or weakness of marriage as a social institution profoundly affects the well-being of everyone in society, especially children.

The state should protect and promote marriage—notably the family unit, which is marriage in its fullest fruition—because it is a distinct and irreplaceable way that men, women, and children can flourish.

The union of husband and wife is, on the whole, the most appropriate environment for rearing children. This is an ideal that is supported by the best available social science.

Recognising same-gender relationships as marriages would legally abolish that ideal.

It would remove the notion that men and women typically have different strengths as parents; that boys and girls tend to benefit from fathers and mothers in different ways.

I also do not support a conscience vote on the issue of same-gender marriage. A conscience vote should only be reserved for matters of life, which this issue is not.

As I travel across the state I do not experience the apparent voter interest in the same-gender marriage debate that is claimed in some sections of the media.

Voters are instead focussed on the day-to-day issues such as the economy, cost of living, access to quality education, drought and infrastructure delivery.

I strongly believe marriage between one man and one woman is critical to making a positive contribution to maintaining social stability.

Society as a whole pays a high price when marriage is devalued.

Thank you for taking the time to write to me on this very important issue.

I was not expecting such a concise and profoundly thought out response. May the Lord bless and encourage Senator O’Sullivan who is standing up for God’s view of heterosexual marriage.

God’s view is heterosexual marriage

Image result for clipart marriage public domain clker.com (public domain)

No matter the voice of the naysayers who are ruining marriage, I have tried to be faithful to God’s view in support of heterosexual marriage in these articles:

Notes

[1] Anne Summers, ‘Abbott’s baby bonus in disguise’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 18 May 2013. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/abbotts-baby-bonus-in-disguise-20130517-2jrmf.html (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[2] In Emma Alberici, ‘Female workforce participation: key is childcare, not babysitting’, The Canberra Times, 18 April 2015. Available at: http://www.canberratimes.com.au/comment/female-workforce-participation-key-is-childcare-not-babysitting-20150418-1mn86z.html (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[3] Anne Summers, ‘The tyranny of the white picket fence: Abbott government can’t be serious about encouraging women in the workforce’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 12 June 2015. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/comment/the-tyranny-of-the-white-picket-fence-abbott-government-cant-be-serious-about-encouraging-women-in-the-workforce-20150612-ghlpop.html (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[4] Greg Jericho, ‘Abbott’s paid parental leave will do little to bring women to the workforce’, The Guardian, 10 March 2014. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/business/grogonomics/2014/mar/10/abbotts-paid-parental-leave-will-do-little-to-bring-women-to-the-workforce (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[5] Sarah, ‘Dear Tony: The power of Australian women’, 13 May 2015. Available at: http://sarahsheartwrites.com/2015/05/13/dear-tony-abbott-the-power-of-the-australian-woman/ (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[6] Emma Alberici, op cit.

[7] Emma Alberici, op cit.

[8] Babette Francis, ‘An open letter to the Prime Minister and Treasurer’, OnLine Opinion, 15 April 2014. Available at: http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=16215 (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[9] Ibid.

[10] Ibid.

[11] Annabel Crabb, ‘Abbott’s message to mothers: get to work’, ABC opinion, The Drum, 16 May 2015. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-05-14/crabb-so-long-howards-cherished-stay-at-home-mum/5452004 (Accessed 23 June 2015, emphasis in original).

[12] ACLW, ‘Statement sent to PM Abbott on support for the current Paid Parental Leave scheme’, 22 May 2015. Available at: http://leadershipforwomen.com.au/transform/statement-sent-to-pm-abbott-on-support-for-the-current-paid-parental-leave-scheme (Accessed 23 June 2015).

[13] Ibid.

Why politicians should not support ‘marriage equality’[1]

Former lesbian, Jeanette Howard (photo courtesy vimeo)

By Spencer D Gear

Australia’s politicians are being asked to vote on same-sex marriage in parliament in a Marriage Equality Bill sponsored by the Labor Party.

The Labor Party Bill

According to the Brisbane Times, this is how Bill Shorten’s Bill will change the definition of marriage in Australia to allow for homosexual as well as heterosexual marriage unions:

The words “man and woman” and “husband and wife” will be replaced by “two people” in the Marriage Act under Bill Shorten’s proposal to redefine marriage in Australia.

Under the changes gay couples who have already married overseas would have their unions recognised under Australian law, with the repeal of section 88EA of the Act….

And, as flagged by Mr Shorten earlier this week, ministers of religion will not be required to solemnise a marriage where the parties to the marriage are of the same sex.

The Labor leader’s bill to legalise same-sex marriage in Australia, which will be introduced to Federal Parliament on Monday, defines marriage as “the union of two people to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”.

The current definition in the Marriage Act, which would be replaced, states it is “the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life”.

The repeal of section 88EA and the redefinition of marriage as between two people would reverse former prime minister John Howard’s 2004 amendments to the Act.

The same-sex marriage bill, Marriage Amendment (Marriage Equality) Bill 2015, allows a union between two people regardless of their sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status (Massola 2015).

However, the Labor Party is joined by some in the Liberal Party government to support same-sex marriage: ‘Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull says he expects parliament will legalise same-sex marriage before the end of the year…. Mr Turnbull says rapidly changing community attitudes to same-sex marriage are likely to ensure the move will ultimately succeed’.[3]

Reasons for rejecting this Bill

A Channel 9 news report for 27 May 2015 stated:

Australians who support gay marriage are being urged to contact their local MP or Senator to voice their opinions, with marriage equality campaigners saying the country is now within “striking distance” of legalising same-sex marriages.

Australian Marriage Equality’s deputy director Ivan Hinton-Teoh today praised federal opposition leader Bill Shorten’s announcement Labor would move a bill in the House of Representatives on Monday to legalise gay marriage.

But he’s urged everyday Australians to keep the pressure up on politicians to ensure the bill passes.

“It’s important our elected officials understand the strength of support (for gay marriage),” Mr Hinton-Teoh told the TODAY Show.

“The most important thing people can do is share their stories, get in contact with their MPs and Senators.”

Mr Shorten yesterday gave formal notice of the bill, which will be seconded by his deputy Tanya Plibersek, stating he will present a bill “for an Act to amend the Marriage Act 1961 to establish marriage equality”.

“Our current law excludes some individuals – and to me, that is unacceptable,” Mr Shorten said.

“I believe the time has well and truly come for the Parliament to debate marriage equality.”

While support for marriage equality seems strong among many parliamentarians, the Abbott government could simply use its numbers in the Lower House to send the bill to a committee.

Some recent polls have put Australia’s support for gay marriage at an all-time high of 72 percent.[4]

We wouldn’t be caused to wonder which view Channel 9 is pushing. We get a similar emphasis from Australia’s ABC News:

In a statement, Mr Shorten said the time had come for Parliament to debate marriage equality and that he found it unacceptable current laws excluded some individuals.

The bill will come before the House of Representatives on Monday.

“I know this private members bill will not have the universal support of my colleagues,” Mr Shorten said.

“It will challenge the deeply held personal beliefs of MPs and senators on both sides of politics.

“This is why Labor members have the freedom to vote their conscience, a freedom Tony Abbott is currently denying his party.”

Even with a conscience vote in the Labor Party, Mr Shorten does not have the numbers to pass his bill.

Rather he is using it to urge the Prime Minister to grant a conscience vote to his MPs, something the Coalition already appears to be edging towards.

In recent days, Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull described Australia as the “odd one out” on same-sex marriage among Commonwealth nations including the United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.

Renewed debate in Australia has been triggered by Ireland’s vote in favour of marriage equality in a referendum at the weekend.

“The world isn’t waiting for Tony Abbott and our Parliament shouldn’t have to,” Mr Shorten said.

“I know there are Coalition MPs who’d support marriage equality if Tony Abbott granted them a free vote.”

Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos said the Coalition had been waiting to see how the Labor Party would move on the matter.

“I know some of my colleagues, like Warren Entsch and others, want to raise the issue and have talked about having game plans on this,” he said.

“So we’ll wait until next week, but certainly I would support a conscience vote on this.”[5]

(logo courtesy Wikipedia)

How does the Australian Christian Lobby respond to this proposed legislation? On 26 May 2015, it had this article on its website: ‘Shorten fails to consider the consequences of changing marriage’. Here it stated that,

Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s same-sex marriage bill fails to consider the consequences of changing the definition of marriage in law, according the Australian Christian Lobby.

“It is disappointing that Australia’s alternative prime minister is legislating a family structure which requires a child to miss out on their mum or dad.

“Many Australians are watching with great concern as florists, photographers and cake makers in other countries are being legally punished simply because they prefer not to participate in a same-sex wedding.

“I wonder if Mr Shorten has considered the consequences of changing the definition of marriage,” Mr Shelton said.

“We urge parliamentarians to vote against the bill.”

In another article, ‘Why Australia should not rush to follow Ireland’ (ACL 26 May 2015), ACL stated:

So militant have they [homosexual marriage activists] become that we are beginning to see glimpses of what life might be like for dissenters in a post gay marriage future.

Senior Labor MP Jenny Macklin gave some insights in an interview with Chris Uhlmann on ABC1’s Insiders recently.

Supporting Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek’s push to expel parliamentarians from the party who don’t toe the line on changing marriage, Macklin equated discrimination on the basis of ‘sexual preference’ with racial and gender discrimination.

Uhlmann had the presence of mind to pick her up on this and make the obvious follow-up point.

Uhlmann – “You are arguing that a person who disagrees with you on this is the same as a racist, that they are a bigot.”

Macklin – “I am not calling anybody names.”

Uhlmann – “But that is the natural extension of what you are saying.”[6]

Of course Uhlmann is right. Whether she wants to admit it or not, what Macklin is saying is that millions of Australians who will never support redefining marriage are the moral equivalents of racists or misogynists. Nice.

With attitudes towards dissent like this, it is no wonder 28 per cent of traditional marriage supporters in Ireland told pollsters they were too afraid to express their views openly.

Email to politicians

Thumbtack note email by zeimusu The following is what I wrote to my local federal MP and some Queensland Senators.[7]

1. Parliament does not determine the nature of marriage. Since the beginning of time that was determined by God: ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh’ (Genesis 2:24), affirmed by Jesus (Matthew 19:5), and confirmed by the apostle Paul (Ephesians 5:31). This Australian nation has its foundation in Christian principles. Please do not go down the route of populist parliamentary and community appeal.

2. It is only the union of a man-woman that has the potential to produce children naturally. Even for artificial insemination or IVF, there is need for the ‘seed’ of male AND female. Male-male or female-female will not do it. Surely this should scream at politicians, GAY MARRIAGE GOES AGAINST A FOUNDATION PILLAR OF AUSTRALIAN SOCIETY!

3. Are you prepared to throw caution to the wind and change the meaning of marriage in a very risky social and political experiment? Heather Barwick is the daughter of lesbians. In an article in the Courier-Mail (March 20, 2015, ‘Heather Barwick, the daughter of lesbians, against gay marriage….), she said: ‘Growing up, and even into my 20s, I supported and advocated for gay marriage. It’s only with some time and distance from my childhood that I’m able to reflect on my experiences and recognise the long-term consequences that same-sex parenting had on me. It’s only now, as I watch my children loving and being loved by their father each day, that I can see the beauty and wisdom in traditional marriage and parenting’.

4. Do you understand the positive impact of children being raised by a mother and father? It was reported by statistician, Graeme Archer, in The Telegraph (UK) that ‘the evidence that children raised in standard two-parent families fare, on average, better in life than their peers – and that boys in particular benefit from the presence of a father – is so strong that it takes a wilful perversion to ignore it’ (04 May 2012, ‘The village can help, but children raised by a mum and dad do best‘).

5. Part of that is because children need role models from both Mum and Dad to have a balanced development in life. The information led to Texas A&M University preparing the following material, based on research: ‘20 Reasons Why Your Child Needs You to Be an Active Father‘. A lesbian couple cannot provide this input. That’s the evidence! Do you understand the damage that will be done in legislating homosexual marriage?

6. The language of ‘marriage equality’ does not provide ‘parenting equality’ for children raised in homosexual marriages. The nature of the man-woman relationship in marriage is radically different from that of a same-sex couple. Therefore, to talk of ‘marriage equality’ is inappropriate labelling.

7. Of course two women can love each other and two men can love each other, but common sense leads to the conclusion that the nature of the loving, sexual relationship between a man and a woman is very different to that happening in same-sex relationships.

8. Do you understand how promiscuous same-sex relationships can be? Do you want children exposed to any number of different men or women in the house who are engaged in ‘bed sex’? ‘In one recent study of gay male couples, 41.3% had open sexual agreements with some conditions or restrictions, and 10% had open sexual agreements with no restrictions on sex with outside partners. One-fifth of participants (21.9%) reported breaking their agreement in the preceding 12 months, and 13.2% of the sample reported having unprotected anal intercourse in the preceding three months with an outside partner of unknown or discordant HIV-status’ (Lelands et al in Nicolosi 2009, ‘An open secret: The truth about gay male couples‘).

9. Does Australia want to be in agreement with Article 7 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child or not? Part 1 of this article states: ‘The child shall be registered immediately after birth and shall have the right from birth to a name, the right to acquire a nationality and, as far as possible, the right to know and be cared for by his or her parents’. The last portion of this statement is shot to bits in homosexual marriage.

10. This is such a fundamental issue for the health of Australia. Politicians need to know that how they vote on this legislation will determine how I vote in the next election – and I’ll be telling my friends of their voting record on this issue.

Please consider these matters in regard to the Bill for Marriage Equality, which would be better called the Bill for Marriage Distortion for couples and children.

What is God’s view on marriage and homosexuality?

Purple Scripture Button Such a question doesn’t seem to enter the minds of many Aussie politicians. However, my local MP has told me he will be supporting marriage to continue to be between a male and a female.

God’s design from the beginning of time was for marriage of a man and a woman. See Genesis 2:24-25, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed’ (ESV).

Jesus Christ affirmed this passage according to Matthew 19:4-6, ‘He answered, Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”? So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate’ (ESV).

(3) The apostle Paul also affirmed this emphasis in Ephesians 5:31, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’ (ESV).

(4) Then add this factor from the apostle Paul who wrote of ‘men who practice homosexuality’ as being among those who were among ‘such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God’ (1 Corinthians 6:9-11). In this list, homosexuals were placed among the sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, greedy, drunkards, revilers who were the ‘unrighteous’ who would not inherit God’s kingdom. But Jesus changes all of these people – even homosexuals.

A redeemed and changed lesbian speaks

If you don’t believe me, read my interview with a redeemed lesbian, Jeanette Howard, ‘One woman’s journey out of lesbianism: An interview with Jeanette Howard’. I recommend her book, Out of Egypt: Leaving lesbianism behind.

(courtesy Kregel Publications)

For some further information see my articles:

Spencer Gear’s submission against homosexual marriage to the Australian House of Representatives

Loree Rudd (Kevin Rudd’s sister): Support for homosexual marriage caused a Labor Party member to quit the Party

Homosexual unions, homosexual marriage, mass media & politicians

Why should we oppose homosexual marriage?

Reasons to oppose homosexual marriage.

Is homosexual life expectancy lower than for heterosexuals?

Kevin Rudd MP’s changed position on same sex marriage is self-refuting

Queen Elizabeth II and Jesus silent on homosexuality

Religious marriage with a different twist: My response to Spencer Howson

Queensland government passed civil homosexual union Bill

Works consulted

Massola, James 2015. Bill Shorten releases details of Labor’s same-sex marriage bill, 29 May. Brisbane Times (online). Available at: http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/bill-shorten-releases-details-of-labors-samesex-marriage-bill-20150529-ghcinb.html (Accessed 30 May 2015).

Notes

[1] I sent the points, ‘Email to my politicians’ (see below) to my local member of federal parliament and some Queensland Senators in Australia on 27 May 2015.

[2] Reference deleted when edited.

[3] Amanda Cavill, SBS News, 27 May 2015, ‘Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull says he expects parliament will legalise same-sex marriage before the end of the year’. Available at: http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2015/05/26/hopes-grow-same-sex-marriage-reform (Accessed 28 May 2015).

[4] 9news.com.au, 27 May 2015, ‘Australia now within “striking distance” of marriage equality say same-sex campaigners’, available at: http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/05/26/02/09/greens-speed-up-marriage-equality-debate (Accessed 27 May 2015).

[5] ‘Bill Shorten to introduce private members bill to legalise same-sex marriage’, ABC News, 27 May 2015. Available at: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-26/shorten-to-introduce-bill-legalising-same-sex-marriage/6499124 (Accessed 27 May 2015).

[6] The footnote was: http://www.jennymacklin.net.au/transcript_insiders_3_may_2015.

[7] I sent the email on Wednesday, 27 May 2015.

The bashing of Fred Nile’s views on ABC TV (Australia)

By Spencer D Gear

The Reverend and Honourable
Fred Nile
MLC

Member of the Legislative Council of New South Wales

(courtesy Wikipedia)

Type
Statutory corporationAvailability
WorldwideHeadquarters
ABC Ultimo Centre
700 Harris Street
Ultimo 2007, SydneyBroadcast area: Australia

Owner
Government of Australia

(courtesy Wikipedia)

If you want to see the mass media bias against Christians, watch what secular journalists do to a politician who is an evangelical Christian operating from a biblical worldview in his or her policies. That’s what I saw on Thursday, 16 April 2015 in the Australian ABC TV programme, 7.30. See, ‘Fred Nile: Controversial Christian Democrat MP poised to hold balance of power in New South Wales parliament’.

Here the ABC proceeded to expose Fred Nile MP (Upper House, New South Wales parliament), who is ‘renowned for campaigning on social issues. He opposes gay marriage, gay adoption, Islamic face coverings, and wants limits on halal food in Australian supermarkets’. The ABC’s bagging of him continued, ‘But despite his long history of activism, he does not understand why some people call him controversial’.

Fred’s response was:

“It always surprises me, because I’m the most non-controversial person you could get,” he said.

“Everything I believe is just so – in my opinion – mainstream and ordinary.

“The only controversy comes because there are groups of people who oppose what I’m saying.”

Then 7.30 proceeded to expose Nile’s approach to Muslim immigration:

Rev Nile once called for a halt to Muslim immigration, and now he fears that a larger Islamic community will try to impose sharia law.

“There are some dangers that Australians should appreciate,” he said.

“Once [the Muslim population] gets to 5 per cent or 10 per cent, it’s not that the Australians change [but] the Muslims change and become more militant and more demanding.”

The opponents on ABC TV

So who does the ABC call on to oppose Fred Nile?

Islamic Friendship Association Spokesman Keysar Trad condemned Mr Nile’s statement.

“I’m very disappointed with Fred Nile’s contribution to New South Wales,” he said.

“As a man of God, as a Reverend, you’d expect him to be inclusive, you’d expect him to reach out with love and compassion and peace towards others.

“But what we’ve seen from him over the last couple of decades is vitriol, divisiveness and fear mongering about Islam and Muslims.”

Then there was Greens MP, John Kaye, who spruiked his opposition to Nile’s policies:

“Fred has always been the pilot fish of the lunar Right,” Greens MP John Kaye said.

“When homophobia was the cause of the day, Fred was right there as their man in parliament.

“Now it’s hatred of Muslims, and fear of Muslims, whether it’s mosques or halal food, Fred is their voice in parliament.”

Mr Kaye said he expected Rev Nile to vote with the Government on most issues.

“He is the Government’s patsy,” he said.

Enter illogical thinking

By calling Fred Nile ‘the pilot fish of the lunar Right’, John Kaye is using an ad hominem logical fallacy to put down Nile. What is a logical fallacy? It is illogic in action. But the journalist who did the interviewing of John Kaye did not call him for using such fallacious reasoning. If he called him to task, he could have said something like, ‘Why are you labelling Fred Nile’s character and actions when you should be dealing with the truth or falsity of his claims about homosexuality, Muslim immigration, halal food and mosques? That’s false reasoning that you are using’. Hearing that from an ABC journalist would send this viewer into an unnatural tizzy fit. The ABC, based on my past listening and viewing, is not in the habit of giving favourable coverage to Christians who are engaged in the public culture.

Does this contemporary journalist not have the common sense to know what John Kaye did in that kind of response? Kaye did not deal with the issues Nile is raising and their impact on Australian society.

Fallacies

The supporters on ABC TV?

Who would you think that ABC TV’s 7.30 would bring in support of Fred Nile so that there would be ‘balance’ in the programme? Outside of his wife, there was

Not a soul. Not one!

The ABC receives approximately $6.61 billion (over 5 years) in Australian government funding to run its broadcast operations. There are many Christians who live in Australia, so who would any journalist worth his salt choose to engage positively with Fred Nile’s views? There was not a single person. So, I sent

A complaint

This is the online bellyache I had against the ABC and its bias:[1]

I’ve just watched your 7.30 programme featuring Fred Nile and his wife in which you proceed to bag Fred Nile for the things he stands for. This was a classic example of ABC bigotry towards this Christian parliamentarian. Who did you choose to oppose him? A Greens MP who proceeded to slam him for what he wants to do about Islamic migration and Fred’s support for the James Packer casino.

If the ABC was to present a balanced programme I’d just about have a heart attack. For every one who opposed Fred on 7.30, you should be presenting one in favour of Fred’s views. That would at least be fair. But Leigh Sales had only the bag in hand to bash Fred Nile’s views.

I’m tired of the bigotry that the ABC presents against those who don’t support the ABC’s agenda. If you did to a Muslim, what you did to Fred, you’d have a Jihad on your hands. But you think that it’s perfectly OK to bash Fred Nile, a Christian, while you receive $2 billion[2] in funding from the Federal Govt. It’s time that the ABC learned what fairness and justice are about.

You slammed Fred Nile with your dose of injustice. What will 7.30 do to change its approach to people who have views with which it disagrees?

P.S. I don’t live in NSW so I can’t vote for Fred Nile but as a Christian, I found what you did to be utterly offensive.

I omitted to mention that one other opponent was featured on 7.30, Islamic Friendship Association Spokesman, Keysar Trad.

The ABC’s reply

How do you think that ABC would reply to what I emailed to them? Well, I’m not allowed to tell you. But I can say, from my perspective, it was not favourable towards the content of my complaint to it about Fred Nile’s views.

But it did make sure that I couldn’t tell you exactly what it said, by making this claim at the end of the email received from a person at ABC’s ‘Audience and Consumer Affairs’ on 20 April 2015. It stated:

The information contained in this email and any attachment is confidential and may contain legally privileged or copyright material. It is intended only for the use of the addressee(s). If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you are not permitted to disseminate, distribute or copy this email or any attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete this email from your system. The ABC does not represent or warrant that this transmission is secure or virus free. Before opening any attachment you should check for viruses. The ABC’s liability is limited to resupplying any email and attachments.

I can’t even give you my response to this reply because I included some quotes from the ABCs reply.

Conclusion

The overall emphasis of the 7.30 story on Fred Nile was to paint this politician who could hold the balance of power as an extremist who doesn’t represent what the Greens MP or the Islamic association promotes.

There’s a lesson here for all Christians who want to engage in public issues through cultural apologetics. Be prepared for antagonistic bashing from mass media journalists and their producers.

New South Wales Legislative Council (55th Parliament)

Upper house (since 1856) of the Parliament of New South Wales

(Courtesy Wikipedia)

Notes

[1] I sent this via an online complaints form to the ABC on Thursday, 16 April 2015, and at my request I received a copy of my complaint by email reply. I await a response from the ABC, but I’m not holding my breath expecting them to do anything by way of change of editorial policy. However, they need to hear my protests and reasons for it.

[2] Malcolm Turnbull MP, Minister for Communications, on his website stated, ‘the Government’s continued investment in national broadcasting of more than $6.61 billion over the same five year period’ (FAQs on ABC and SBS, 19 December 2014, Malcolm Turnbull MP).

Politicians, people and the pits

Why this person distrusts politicians

Australian Parliament House, Canberra (Wikipedia)

By Spencer D. Gear

Why do politicians refuse to answer the questions of mass media interviewers? It frustrates me over and over when a journalist asks a specific question on a topic and the politician gives an answer that is not related to the question. It’s called political spin and amounts to a red herring logical fallacy.

That happened on Wednesday, 17 September 2014, when the Australian federal treasurer, the honourable Joe Hockey, was interviewed on Australia’s ABC’s nation current affairs programme, ‘7.30’. The nature of the logical fallacy became evident when the interviewed talked over the treasurer to try to bring him back to the topic. Those in current affairs’ shows often do this when a politician goes off at a tangent and doesn’t answer the question.

Some background

Peter Costello (Wikipedia)

This is how The Guardian, a British newspaper, reported on former Australian treasurer, Peter Costello’s, speech to a property forum:

Australia’s longest-serving treasurer has warned that the country’s luck is beginning to run out as wages fall and consumer pessimism grows.

Peter Costello says while Australia is “far” from recession, the economy is undergoing big changes, leaving people with a sense of uncertainty about the future.

“(Australia’s) luck’s beginning to run out,” he told a property forum in Sydney on Wednesday. “For the first time since the 1990s, per capita incomes have stabilised in Australia – they are no longer growing.

“Young people under 50 who have lived through a period of uninterrupted rising incomes are beginning to experience something that’s different.”

Consumers were “anxious” and had “stopped spending”, he said.

Real wages were falling and disposable incomes had “peaked”, Costello said.[1]

Costello also added: ‘And they’re distrustful of the political class where consensus is breaking down. We need to work out how to put things back together’.[2]

A politician’s problem

I have grown increasingly frustrated by the inability of politicians, whether federal or state, and no matter what political brand, to answer straight-forward questions put to them by journalists. What follows is but one example.

Leigh Sales (canberratimes.com.au, public domain)

On the evening of 17 September 2014, I watched Australia’s ABC 7.30 programme and Australian federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, being interviewed by Leigh Sales. See ‘Joe Hockey rejects Peter Costello’s warning that Australia’s economic luck is running out as demand for resources falls‘. Leigh referred to the above speech made by Australia’s former, but longest serving, federal treasurer, Peter Costello, on 17 September 2014.

One of Leigh’s questions to Hockey was: ‘Mr Costello mentioned a distrust of the political class. Has the Abbott government contributed to that by introducing plans like the Medicare co-payment and the pension changes without ever mentioning those things before you were elected?’

Although Hockey said, ‘Well, no, not at all’, he directly avoided answering the specifics of this question. Leigh persisted, saying that politicians have eroded public goodwill and this has contributed to the distrust of the political class. Hockey continued on with his political spin (only saying what you wanted to say in promoting his political line) and not answering her questions about this specific topic of distrust of the political class.

I ask Hockey and all politicians: Don’t you understand what that does to droves of us around the nation who know what he is doing and we are fed up with THE POLITICAL TACTICS OF NOT ANSWERING QUESTIONS. If he and his party continue to do this, I’ll put my TV volume on mute immediately I see a politician on air. I’ve learned to expect the politicians of whichever stripe all to do the same – AVOID THE ISSUES OF THE MASS MEDIA QUESTIONER.

Don’t politicians understand what this does to the people of the electorate? It causes exactly what Leigh Sales said – a distrust of the political class, eroding public good will, and causes listeners to tune out on politicians.

There is a simple solution

When will politicians wake up to the Aussie populace who know exactly what they are doing?

All politicians would enhance credibility if they as politicians would make these commitments:

1. I now will specifically answer whatever a mass media journalist asks me about any topic.

2. Quit making promises before the election that you will break when in government.

3. Become politicians of integrity who speak the truth and nothing but the truth.

Is that asking too much? That’s what would assist in enhancing political good will.

Equipping politicians for the simple solution

man-young-2

(courtesy Rostrum)

One of the problems for politicians is that when many of them are elected to parliament, they don’t seem to have a handle on being competent public speakers. They need more training in how to think on their feet to answer:

questions in parliament,

questions from their constituents, and

questions from the mass media.

How do they get that training? Before they are elected to parliament and while they are in parliament, join a public speaking club such as Rostrum or Toastmasters.

I know that it is more comfortable for a politician to keep to the script of the party line. They can be prepared for this kind of rote response. However, I find it dissatisfying as a listener. There is no excuse for politicians not to become better presenters and to learn to think on their feet when journalists and constituents ask questions – even pointed questions.

Works consulted

Australian Associated Press 2014. Peter Costello warns ‘Australia’s luck is beginning to run out’, The Guardian (online),17 September. Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/17/peter-costello-warns-australias-luck-is-beginning-to-run-out (Accessed 18 September 2014).

Powell, R 2014. Luck running out: Peter Costello warns of hard days ahead as property market slows, The Sydney Morning Herald, 17 September. Available at: http://www.smh.com.au/business/the-economy/luck-running-out-peter-costello-warns-of-hard-days-ahead-as-property-market-slows-20140917-10i0t7.html (Accessed 18 September 2014).

Notes

[1] Australian Associated Press (2014).

[2] Powell (2014).