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Election 2015 - Being Cashed Up

It's taken until the second last week of the election campaign, but I finally have a piece of literature from my local LNP candidate, Leila Abukar. I like that the LNP has pre-selected a woman of Somali origin for my local seat, but it's depressingly familiar (no matter which party you talk about) that she's been nominated for a seat they are unlikely to win.  The LNP won Yeerongpilly in 2012 by a very slim margin, and within a year their succesful candidate, Carl Judge, resigned from the party in disgust.  He is running this year as an independent but it seems almost certain the seat will return to Labor. Still you can't accuse them of skimping on her campaign.  We've been reading about how much the LNP has out-fund-raised Labor and this is evidence right here. All Labor could afford on behalf of Mark Bailey was an ordinary, old-fashioned letter.  Enclosed in Abukar's letter, on the other hand, is a glossy, carefully crafted four-page A4 brochure and a

Manus Island

You don't need any special insight to understand what is going on in the Manus Island detention centre.  You don't need inside information or intelligence reports.  You just need a basic level of intelligence. The detention centre on Manus Island is a hell-hole.  It is made up of hot and poorly ventilated tin sheds on a tropical island.  Drinking water is rationed.  It is overcrowded and inmates have little or no privacy.  Residents have to queue for hours at mealtimes in the stifling heat.  There are inadequate health services, not enough toilets and showers, and no soap and water in the smelly latrines.  Don't take my word for it - read Amnesty International's report from their visit in November 2013.  They are still awaiting a response from the Immigration Minister. The inmates in this substandard human-rights free zone are not hardened criminals.  They are ordinary men who have fled persecution and danger in their homelands and tried to reach safety in Austr

Election 2015 - Being Local

Talking of local campaigning , last week I got a letter from Mark Bailey, the Labor candidate for Yeerongpilly. The opening sentence reads as follows. The upcoming election is an opportunity to make sure Yeerongpilly is represented by someone who will stand up for us and fight hard for our local area. Then he lists some negative local impacts of LNP government decisions over the past three years - loss of hospital beds and nurses in two of our major hospitals, the level of youth unemployment, increased electricity bills, the closure of a local high school.  Then he goes on. As a local resident and former local Councillor, I'll fight for more local jobs and to restore much needed funding for our frontline health and education services after Campbell Newman's savage cuts. I will always put the interests of our local community first just as I did as the Moorooka Ward Councillor.  That's my commitment to you. When Mark Bailey was the Councillor for Moorooka  I was w

Gillian Triggs

Just for something a little different, and a little more pissed off, here's something slightly removed from the Queensland Election.  You may have noticed some headlines recently about Human Rights Commission chairperson Gillian Triggs. If you read the Murdoch press, especially the Australian, they will be hysterical. Gillian Triggs backs Indonesian Wife Killer Detainee Tony Abbott blasts Gillian Triggs over wife killer John Basikbasik Gillian Triggs' advice a 'betrayal' of women The Guardian is more, well, guarded. Abbott attacks Gillian Triggs over call to free convicted refugee John Basikbasik You may notice that even though Triggs is far from a household name the headlines - even in the Guardian - use her name not her title.  I wonder why that would be? A quick summary of the story.  John Basikbasik is a West Papuan refugee who arrived in Australia by boat (actually, by canoe) in 1985.  He was granted a protection visa on the basis of his co

Election 2015 - Being Independent

Given current polling, one of the possible outcomes of the coming State election is a hung parliament, meaning that government will need to be formed with the support of independents and minor parties. Our major parties both hate this idea, and try to persuade voters against it.  Both parties are currently saying they won't form a minority government with the support of the cross-benches.  I don't think that promise is worth the air it was spoken into.  If we have a hung parliament, at least one of them will do a deal, even though they don't like it. They say they don't like minority government because it creates instability, but actually it's just because they are so bad at negotiation.  Plenty of countries have multi-party governments as a matter of routine, and they include some of the most stable democracies on the planet. The Queensland electoral system makes things difficult for minor parties.  We have no upper house, and a lower house made up exclusivel

Election 2015 - Being Anxious

I mentioned in my previous post that the LNP has been working hard for the past three years to create a climate of anxiety.  One person who doesn't seem to need much help to become anxious is Labor leader Annastacia Palaszczuk. Every time I have seen her in the media over the last three years her face has worn an anxious, harried expression.  She even wears it in the election advertising that has appeared on our TVs this week.  The only time it left her face was in the press conference she gave following the announcement of the election date.  Presumably she was told by her media advisers that she should smile more, so she tried one at the end of the conference.  It wasn't convincing. Of course she has a lot to be anxious about.  She was a low-profile cabinet minister in the Bligh Government - her most senior post was as Minister for Transport and Multicultural Affairs in the final year of the government.  Then following the electoral rout of March 2012 she found herse

Election 2015 - Being Strong

So, Campbell Newman has finally decided to put us all out of our misery by calling the 2015 election for January 31 this year.  His stated reason - that he wanted to provide certainty for business - tells you a lot about our present Liberal-National Party government.  This is the most business-friendly government - and people unfriendly one - we have had in a long time. I'm not going to pretend to give you an unbiased view of this election.  Let me tell you right up front, I won't be voting LNP.  Not that I'm much of a fan of the Labor Party either.  They have largely sold out to the same business interests as the LNP, but at least they are able to soften it with a slender padding of social responsibility.  I would like to be able to vote for a genuinely socially progressive alternative, but in the current environment I have to accept that my preferences will eventually flow back Labor's way. Anyway, having got that out of the way up front, I want to talk to you abo

The Subversion of Christianity

Reading Leo Tolstoy's religious writings earlier this year made me want to have another go at reading Jacques Ellul's The Subversion of Christianity.   I began to read this book some years ago, only to find that the copy in my hands was a misprint and half the text was missing.  Life intervened, and it took Tolstoy to remind me of it. In some ways, Ellul was a French equivalent to the Englishman CS Lewis.  Like Lewis he was a prominent Christian intellectual of more or less orthodox Protestant views.  Like Lewis, he had a depth of theological knowledge but was mostly self-taught (although Ellul did complete most of a theology degree before the Second World War intervened) while pursuing an academic career in a different discipline (Ellul in sociology, Lewis in literature). Of course there are also differences.  Lewis wrote for a popular audience and much of his writing is highly accessible.  Ellul was far more "intellectual" and his writing can be dense and diffi

The Little Drummer Boy

It seems that this Christmas I can't get away from renditions of The Little Drummer Boy .  Here is the one I enjoyed most, from Walk Off the Earth. I don't really know what's with the dogs.  If you prefer something more traditional here's an  a capella  version by Pentatonix. In case you haven't had it drummed into you by years of repetition over shopping centre sound systems and in Christmas concerts and pageants, the lyric goes like this: Come they told me, pa rum pum pum pum A new born King to see, pa rum pum pum pum Our finest gifts we bring, pa rum pum pum pum To lay before the King, pa rum pum pum pum,  rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, So to honour Him, pa rum pum pum pum,  When we come. Little Baby, pa rum pum pum pum I am a poor boy too, pa rum pum pum pum I have no gift to bring, pa rum pum pum pum That's fit to give a king, pa rum pum pum rum pum pum pum, rum pum pum pum, Shall I play for you, pa rum pum pum pum,

The Uses and Abuses of Fear

A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of "lone wolf terrorism" .  Now we have had our own version of the same thing, a terrifying and spectacular act of violence in which an Iranian immigrant called Man Horan Monis held a group of staff and customers hostage in a cafe in Sydney's Martin Place for 16 hours.  The standoff ended with Monis' death and that of two of his hostages. In its wake, government leaders and commentators have been asking the same question I did.  Was Monis a terrorist, or was he just a criminal?  On the one hand, he had a history of espousing radical Islamism and claimed to be acting in support of the Islamic State.  On the other hand, he didn't even have an IS flag to display, and had to ask police negotiators to bring him one.  His previous crimes appear to include writing hate letters to the families of Australian soldiers killed in Afghanistan along with violence of a less political nature including a string of sexual assaults and bei

Cruel Mothers

In the last few weeks we've had some very sad stories in our media.  Police shootings of mentally ill young men, children dying from drinking unprocessed milk, our government winning the right to treat asylum seekers with unprecedented cruelty....  In the midst of this are two tragic crimes. On November 23 some people out for a Sunday morning cycle heard strange noises coming from a partly covered drain beside Sydney's M7 freeway.  They investigated and found a newborn baby boy abandoned in the drain.  Doctors judged that the child had been there for 6 days.  The lucky boy is now recovering in foster care and his mother has been found and charged with attempted murder. Just a week later , two young children playing on Maroubra Beach in Sydney uncovered the remains of another infant who turned out to be a baby girl.  Sadly this child did not survive and the remains were badly decomposed.  The search for her mother is still ongoing. These stories produce a complex re