GILLARD IS A HOMPHOBIC HYPOCRITICAL BIGOT AND YOU SHOULD NOT VOTE FOR HER!

The following article appeared in The Age on 17 January 2013, and the letters following the article are relevant to this and an earlier post. You have to ask yourself how low can this government get? Isn't it at rock-bottom yet? It must be pretty close by now!

Religious groups free to discriminate against pregnant women

By Jane Lee and Clay Lucas

The draft bill makes clearer which groups religious organisations can discriminate against lawfully.

Religious organisations, including those funded by the state government, retain their legal right to discriminate against pregnant women under a new human rights bill. The draft of the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill consolidates five existing federal discrimination laws after a decades-long campaign by lawyers and human rights advocates. The draft bill makes clearer which groups religious organisations can discriminate against lawfully.

Under the draft bill, faith-based groups, including schools and hospitals, can still refuse to hire people because of a wide range of attributes that would be unlawful for any other organisation, including women who are pregnant or potentially pregnant.

When the Sex Discrimination Act - which came into force in 1984 - was drafted, a number of religious bodies argued they should be allowed to discriminate against pregnant or ''potentially pregnant'' women to avoid having to employ unwed mothers.

The Human Rights Law Centre's director of advocacy and strategic litigation, Anna Brown, said that while the bill introduced important new protections from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, and removed the ability of religious bodies to discriminate on the basis of age, sex and breastfeeding, it was a ''missed opportunity'' to narrow the broad exemptions available to religious groups.

Weet-Bix manufacturer Sanitarium is a religious organisation owned and operated by the Seventh-Day Adventist church, which means it could discriminate against people with these attributes.

An online advertisement for a manufacturing team leader position with the company says: ''If you share our passion for what we do, our products and you can align with our Christian-based principles this is a great opportunity for you.''

Sanitarium spokeswoman Julie Praestiin said the company's workplace culture was ''grounded on Christian-based values of care, courage, humility, integrity and passion which are generally shared by the Australian community''.

She said Sanitarium complied with employment laws. ''We are an equal opportunity employer and have a diverse workforce which encompasses a variety of cultures and worldviews. Religious belief is not a condition of employment.''

Hugh de Kretser, executive officer of the Federation of Community Legal Centres, said that Sanitarium, which is understood to have a turnover of $300 million a year – although the church is not required to lodge Sanitarium's financial reports – should not be allowed to discriminate.

''That a large organisation with a turnover of $300 million a year is given a green light by the law to discriminate highlights the problems with these exemptions,'' he said.

''It's about balancing freedom of religion from freedom from discrimination, and getting it right as to where we draw the line. And examples like this show that the exemptions need to be wound back.''

President of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Professor Gillian Triggs, said that the government had aimed to consolidate laws rather than ''embark on full-scale reform''.

Professor Triggs acknowledged that there were some tensions between how the bill protected different human rights. ''In a secular society such as Australia . . . one does not want to give any sort of particular priority to one freedom above the right of people to non-discriminatory employment.'' She said it was important ''that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'' as the bill was the first step towards creating a coherent federal human rights system.

Jane.Lee@fairfaxmedia.com.au ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Letters in The Age:

A betrayal of human rights

January 17, 2013

THE Gillard government had the opportunity to create a law that prevented discrimination against workers and volunteers on the basis of certain ''attributes'' including sexuality and single parenthood. Instead it chose to exclude faith-based organisations (The Age, 16/1) from this even though they receive billions of dollars of taxpayers' money, via funding agreements with governments, to provide essential education, health and community services. Frequently they are the sole local service provider.

Imagine how it feels to know you are denigrated to such an extent that, no matter how experienced and competent you are at work, you can be sacked with no redress because your very being ''injures the religious sensitivities of adherents of that religion''. What do taxpayer-funded, universal services have to do with religious sensitivities? This is a human rights issue that should involve the whole community. I am still haunted by the car stickers proclaiming ''Kill a Queer for Christ'' that I saw in the United States. Bad things happen when good people do nothing.

Lyn McKenzie, Fitzroy

Illustration: Jack Chadwick.

Enshrining bigotry

IN 1981, a friend was sacked from his teaching job at a Catholic school in Geelong after he let slip to a colleague that he was living with his girlfriend. That such action was legal in the 1980s was lamentable. Fast forward to 2013 and the legality of that bigotry is about to be enshrined in the Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill. Haven't we come a long way?

Richard Aspland, Rosanna

Well, fair's fair

SO RELIGIOUS groups can refuse to hire law-abiding people they deem to be sinners. Presumably they will not get too upset if I refuse to hire someone because they are religious. Do unto others…

Andy Stewart, Coburg

Shameful legislation

FAR from being the courageous leader she markets herself as, Julia Gillard lacks a spine. She also betrays the real values of Labor and sells out a fairer Australia for base political interests. It is bad enough that she is happy to entrench discrimination against those who face discrimination in their daily lives. Worse is that Penny Wong, an openly gay person, says she is seeking ''to balance the existing law and the practice of religious exemptions with the principle of non-discrimination''. There is no balance when discrimination is legislated. Labor's move to the extreme right of politics is complete. Shame on Gillard and Wong.

Douglas Potter, Surrey Hills

But the Bible said …

RELIGIOUS groups discriminate against gays because the Bible tells them it is OK to hate them. Shamefully, the government agrees. I am looking forward to religious groups sacking menstruating women and those who eat shellfish, trim their beards and wear clothes of mixed material. However, owning and beating slaves is OK.

Ian Smith, Whittlesea

...and another thing

SHAME on Gillard for giving in to bullying by the so-called Australian Christian Lobby. No government should condone discrimination.

Robert Humphreys, Coburg

Discrimination

TO THOSE faith-based organisations that don't want me as an employee: do you still want my taxes?

Michael Dalton, Yarraville

CHURCHES can discriminate against those who are ''different''. That's a lovely Christian attitude. What utter hypocrisy.

Keith Beman, Woodend

GIVEN the revelations of clergy abuse, the last thing churches should be allowed to do is ''vet the sexual practices of potential employees''.

Benjamin Doherty, West Melbourne

GILLARD is our most disappointing atheist prime minister. She could have promoted tolerance and rationality, but she caved in to superstitious bigotry.

Terry Kelly, Carlton North

........and to add insult to injury, WE have to continue to pay our taxes and those who discriminate DON'T pay any at all!!! (RED_JOS COMMENT)

SELECTIVE INDIGNATION!

An article in the newspapers during the week of 31 December 2012 to 4 January 2013 - has produced some interesting analyses.

Pension reductions have been forced on single women with children to force them into newstart allowance and to make them look for employment when the youngest child turns 8. There are less and less jobs and if incomes are reduced, searching for jobs becomes more and more difficulty because of associated costs. No matter, an Australian Labor Party (sic) has all the answers for social problems, as ever robbing the poor to pay the rich and make them richer. Hence the growing divide between rich and poor!

On 1 July 2009 the Rudd ALP government "married" gay, lesbian, transgender, HIV couples living together and made them into "married couples" in itself and antiquated outmoded custom where men owned women and no woman was entitled to a single pension when her husband retired and was given a pension. Married couples did not and do not each get a single pension - they get a married rate pension, considerably less than 2 single pensions - and this is now 2013!!

Fast forward to the here and now! When the two of us were "married" by Kevin Rudd and his bunch of merrie men and women, and our single pensions which we had been receiving during our 70s and some of our 80s were combined into a "married" rate pension, we each lost about $100 per fortnight.

The Rudd government refused to provide a "grandfathering" clause to this change thus apparently ensuring a saving annually to the federal government of about $66 million per year.

In addition, now that we had a joint and combined income, where previously I personally as an individual received extra income from two small superannuation indexed pensions which, when they went up with indexing increased my income by a few cents a week, Centrelink reduced my pension by a few cents per fortnight, but now that we had been turned into Siamese twins by the government, when my pension was reduced fortnightly, so too was my partner's, thus saving the federal government a paltry sum which was expended on sending us letters each time with our amended incomes.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction!

Where is the understanding of low income people by a government hell-bent on ensuring that their capitalist friends are enriched immeasurably - by a few paltry dollars from pensioners and single parents?

Spare us from their tears!

BOB CARR UNDERLINES THE GILLARD GOVERNMENT'S HUMAN RIGHTS HYPOCRISY!

Bob Carr, Australia's foreign minister, was quoted on ABC radio on Wednesday 15 January 2013 as saying that he welcomes a re-opening of a North Korean embassy in Canberra because it would allow Australia to draw attention to human rights abuses in North Korea.

This is the same Bob Carr who was premier of New South Wales for about 10 years during which he found it difficult to equalise age of consent for sexual relations between heteros and homos.

This is the same Bob Carr who is now part of the Gillard Australian Labor Party (sic)government which has just granted exemptions for religious bodies from equal human rights for the Gay Lesbian, Transgender, HIV (GLTH) members of the community on the grounds that they can choose who meets their religious requirements in the running of their organisations such as aged care, schools and other religious institutions!

And before finishing with Bob Carr let us consider his and his government's deepest hypocrisy in relation to nuclear countries such as North Korea and those not EVER mentioned as nuclear powers such as Israel, because we - read US bumboys or arselickers - consider ourselves as being one of Israel's closest allies. (Let them occupy the whole of the west bank and Gaza and there will be no further problem in Israel and Palestine because Palestine will no longer exist!)

HOMOPHOBIA AND HYPOCRISY

It is difficult to know where to begin with this whole ghastly story of "O What a Tangled Web We Weave..........." because we should all have learnt by now that governments of all permutations and combinations lie to us all the time and cover up those issues which they don't want us ever to find out about - Julian Assange comes to mind.

But back to the present dilemma. Gillard and her government are stacked with homophobes, from Gillard herself to Roxon, Swan, Plibersek, Combet, Ferguson, Danby, Wong - yes you read correctly - she is a Christian lesbian (a contradiction in terms - tautology?) and others too numerous to mention. The hypocrisy starts with issues like gay marriage, gays employed in religious institutions, gays in positions of authority in various capacities, and religious institutions which pay no taxes but claim exemption on the grounds of reverse discrimination.

This article by David Marr appeared in The Age on Monday 14 January 2013 and explains much better than I can what is meant by hypocrisy in this government, led by an atheist and kowtowing to the religious right and all its adherents in order to ensure their support at the next election and for as long as possible into the future.

This was followed by letters in The Age on the next two days:

Visible endorsement

The exemptions proposed under federal discrimination law (Comment, 14/1) are not in plain English. The section should be retitled ''Support for bigotry'' and should be explicitly opt in. Then we can clearly see which religions endorse bigotry.

Further, it's deeply hypocritical for those who give money or attend services to say, ''Oh, I don't support XYZ actions of my religion but still call myself a member.'' If you continue to belong, you visibly endorse the actions of the leadership and are answerable for what is done in your name.

Janine Truter, The Basin

……. AND ANOTHER THING

Will Tony Abbott oppose the discriminatory anti-discrimination bill? Me thinks not.

Alan Williams, Port Melbourne

AND

In thrall to church

IT BEGGARS belief that in a secular society, the church and, in particular, the Catholic Church, can hold such sway over the lives of ordinary Australians (''Labor's anti-discrimination legislation is a bigots' charter'', Comment, 14/1). Publicly funded institutions should not be able to discriminate against those who do not subscribe to a particular religious point of view.

But it is not only employees who are discriminated against; public Catholic maternity hospitals don't give their patients a three-month scan, presumably for fear they may choose to terminate if the scan throws up something untoward with the foetus.

Australia was formed as a secular state so why does our government collude with the churches?

Megan Peniston-Bird, Hawthorn

So out of touch

RELIGION is creeping insidiously into Australian politics and it will eventually backfire on those promoting it. It's bad enough that Labor cosies up to the Australian Christian Lobby, which only represents itself and not most Christians, let alone the wider community. This coupled with Labor continuing the Howard government's ideological blunder of placing fundamentalist chaplains in state schools reeks of special privilege to one sector of society.

Many socially progressive issues are being ignored by parliamentarians reliant on the faith-gene instead of rational and compassionate thinking. The Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill is a disgraceful display of kowtowing to religious leaders who are out of touch with the electorate.

David Nicholls, president, Atheist Foundation of Australia, Maitland, SA

…….AND ANOTHER THING

It’s not OK to discriminate in regard to colour, age or sex, that is unless you are an organisation that believes in a book written many hundreds of years ago.

Geoff Lane, Gisborne

This article by Jonathan Swan was in The Age newspaper on 16 January 2013 and provides the news of the Gillard government's ongoing pandering to the religious right bigots who have her ear and provide so many of the votes.

When finally one day governments in Australia have the guts to tax religions we might be on the way to equality - and pigs will fly!!

GLTH people may work for us and we will gladly take their taxes, but EQUALITY??? Not in our lifetimes!

MEDIA PROBLEMS INTERNATIONAL!

After having posted an item a few days ago in this blog about the media in Australia and how pathetic they have been in recent years in fulfilling their mandate by informing people about world events, along comes an item in Nation of Change on 3 JANUARY 2013 explaining much more graphically than I was able to do, about what is left of the media.

Here is the article:

A Newsworthy Investment

Let us address the declining fortunes of today’s mainstream mass media. (Yes, I can hear your pained screams of “Nooooo…we don’t want to!” However, we really must, because it’s not about them, but us — about our ability to be at least quasi-informed about who’s-doing-what-to-whom-and-why, in order for us to be a self-governing people. So buckle up, here we go.)

The honchos of America’s newspaper establishment are quick to blame the Internet for their loss of readers, not noticing that their own product has fallen victim to conventional wisdomitis. This affliction leaves them printing little more than the contrived “wisdom” of the corporate powers. It’s not a big selling point with readers.

Ironically, this narrow perspective not only saps their sense of what’s “news,” but also their business sense. For example, with readership declining, the accepted industry response by owners and publishers is to fire beat reporters, shrink the news hole, reduce reporting to rewrites of wire service articles, and run hokey PR campaigns hyping the shriveled product as “Real News.”

But here’s some real news they might want to consider: the new owners of theOrange County Register are blazing a contrarian path toward reviving their paper’s prosperity. Editor Ken Brusic notes that offering less to subscribers and charging more not only is a ripoff and an insult to readers, but a sure path to failure. “So,” he says, “we’re now offering more,” expanding the Register’s newsroom, its coverage, and the paper’s size.

Gosh — hire real watchdog reporters, dig out real news, and make the paper relevant to local readers — what a novel notion for a news business! Of course, the conventional wisdomites are sneering at this unorthodox approach. “It’s not what most people are doing,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst at the Poynter Institute. Exactly — and that’s why it’s so promising.

ABOUT JIM HIGHTOWER

National radio commentator, writer, public speaker, and author of the book, Swim Against The Current: Even A Dead Fish Can Go With The Flow, Jim Hightower has spent three decades battling the Powers That Be on behalf of the Powers That Ought To Be - consumers, working families, environmentalists, small businesses, and just-plain-folks.

MEDIA MATTERS AND MEDIA NON-MATTERS

This has been written as a letter to the editors of the Sunday Age and the Sydney Morning Herald in response to their editorial on Sunday 30 December 2012 headed “Show some resolve and give us the politics we deserve”, (link: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/editorial/show-some-resolve-and-give-us-the-politics-we-deserve-20121229-2c0hl.html?skin=text-only) and what it DIDN’T say!

The letter will doubtless be ignored and so, apart from being published in the blog, it will also be posted on my web page which has letters the media will not publish.

The editorial in the Sunday Age mentions many items about which people in this country have concerns.

These include politicians, equality of opportunity, care for the most vulnerable and marginalised, Peter Slipper, Craig Thomson, asylum seekers, carbon tax, Kevin Rudd, policy, voters, education, health, infrastructure, drugs, and the indigenous population, managing to squeeze them into the second-last paragraph.

I looked in vain through the article and read it and re-read it to see mention of the media for a record of what has been playing out in newspapers, radio, television and on the web where all or some of the above issues have or have not been discussed.

Not a word!

The fact that the media reports what it wants to, how it wants to, when it wants to, and if at all, would give some measure of the responsibility of the media in distortions of the news in Australia.

What about the wars in which Australia is and has been involved, the dollar expenditure on these wars, the loss of lives and damage to the lives of survivors and all their families? To say nothing of what has been inflicted on the countries in which these wars have occurred.

Israel and Palestine don’t get a mention, but then Palestine doesn’t even exist as far as the main stream media (MSM) are concerned. And on that topic, Greens and members of that party have been vilified and denigrated for their stand on the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement which was instrumental in helping to end apartheid in South Africa.

And what about Australia’s own closet apartheid issue – or are the Aborigines no longer to even be talked about?

Why is it that investigative journalists on the web have been able to uncover stories relating to the Health Services Union, the Ashby/Slipper/Brough affair but the MSM hasn’t been able to do it themselves with their vastly superior resources?

The MSM are controlled by their owners who are for the most part right-wing reactionary bigots who hire people to do as they are told, toady to their bosses, and generally carry out the discriminatory and biased reporting required by their bosses who want to put in place governments of their political persuasions who will do as they are told, not some wishy-washy pseudo-liberals who work around the fringes and who, themselves are guilty of discrimination in fields which suit their own policies and also accord with the business people whose interests they are protecting.

The editorial mentions voters and says they are more sophisticated than they are generally credited with being and then goes on to simplify the major issues of the day by under-reporting them, distorting their real meanings and also at the same time not reporting on issues that matter and become urgent over time.

The main-stream-media have been guilty of demonising asylum seekers in keeping with the requirements of both major political parties and we are all the poorer for the reactionary outcomes from these reports.

Not mentioned at all in the editorial is a group of people in the community who continue to be discriminated against and are vilified whenever possible. This group of people is part of the gay, lesbian, transgender and HIV (GLTH) communities and homophobia continues to be a major disease in our society, aided and abetted by the MSM.

A society which is ageing and those parts of it which are part of the GLTH group, continue to be treated as if they should shuffle off this mortal coil and stop costing society so much as they age.

Religion and paedophilia which has become so “main-stream” for the moment because of the announcement of a Royal Commission, abortion rights, equality for women, GLTH people, euthanasia, suicide and youth suicide, the main stream media occasionally broaches these topics and then conveniently forgets about them when it suits, and they never get resolved, but continue to fester just below the surface.

The media have shown an unprecedented bias in attacking the government and many members of the cabinet and shown how this bias relates to silences when it comes to the opposition and its ongoing denigration of the government in the opposition leader’s grim determination to bring down the government and become the prime minister. The polls have shown their support for these tactics.

Dorian Gray is seen as never ageing as his hidden portrait shows the ugliness of his deeds. The media’s deeds are hidden as they murder truth, honesty and integrity. Those who want to know what is happening here and around the world, and rely on the media to inform them are short-changed all the time by MSM but now fortunately have alternative means of finding the truth.

Bradley Manning and Julian Assange exposed the truths we have all been denied for so many years and, like most whistle-blowers who are trying to right the wrongs of the societies they live in, they are being pilloried and hounded and prosecuted for exposing crimes which they have not committed, but governments around the world have, aided and abetted by the media who do an excellent job of cover-up!

Talk about censorship and self-censorship!

Welcome to 2013!

WINDOWS 8 DEMONSTRATION!

This wonderful video comes from Geoff Coupe's blog and should be able to help those who are unable to understand how to operate Windows 8. I think Geoff Coupe is surprised at those people who are complaining about this programme, but not everyone is computer literate and for some of us Windows 8 is totally incomprehensible!

DROPBOX DOES NOT ALLOW PEOPLE TO CONTACT THEM!

Dropbox is a very useful tool to enable you to share files and folders with everyone else.

However, when you have a problem and want to contact Dropbox for information on how a particular programme works, it is literally impossible to find out how to get any answers because they are not contactable.

If there is a solution to this ridiculous situation, I hope someone who knows will contact me and tell me how to send them a message, otherwise Dropbox is of no use to me and I will certainly make sure that I tell everyone else I know who is contemplating a cloud programme that dropbox is not the way to go!