Painting Fakes

Extinction Rebellion has been making headlines around the world, including here in the centre of the universe (Brisbane, or course).  Their campaigns of nonviolent civil disobedience, aiming to create pressure to accelerate action on climate change, have disrupted daily life in major cities around the world.  Here in Brisbane, as elsewhere, they have blocked roads and other transport routes, gluing themselves to roads and locking themselves on to pieces of infrastructure to ensure long delays.  Plenty of people have been arrested, some multiple times, but this is part of their intention. Like many people who feel strongly about the need for action on climate change, I am torn about Extinction Rebellion.  Overall, I support them.  I agree with their message - that we need to urgently decarbonise and that we are a long way from taking climate change seriously either in Australia or globally.  I'm also not troubled by nonviolent civil disobedience, a time...

So, in Part 1 of this series I discussed the religious dimensions of the Israel Folau case, and in Part 2 I provided a summary of how international human rights treaties frame religious and other freedoms.  Now, onto the current Australian legislation.  The Commonwealth Attorney-General, Christian Porter, released the government's draft Religious Discrimination Bill at the end of August 2019, with a consultation period of a little over a month (ending October 2). The drive to legislate for religious freedom gained pace during the process of legalising same sex marriage, and is a kind of compensation to conservative religious people for losing that battle. In the wake of that process the government established a Religious Freedom Review led by former Attorney-General Phillip Ruddock.  This review found that there is no particular immediate threat to religious freedom in Australia. The Panel also heard that, as a whole, Australians generally enjoy religious freedo...

So, I never got an answer to my last Dear Scomo letter.  So instead of waiting forever, I wrote him another one. Dear Prime Minister Jon I am still awaiting your reply to my letter of 14 June, but I thought that I would write to you again given that events have moved on since then. Back in June I wrote asking you to lead your government into a more positive engagement with the issue of climate change.   I suggested you needed to move Australia towards more willing and enthusiastic participation in global mitigation efforts, planning for our economic transition to net zero emissions and getting serious about adaptation. While you have not replied to my letter the actions of your government since then have left me with little confidence you are getting to grips with this important issue, despite your reassuring words. You have repeatedly assured Australians that we are well on track to meeting our 2030 emissions reduction targets.   Yet official governm...

The Climate Strike and associated heightening of social media discussion has also brought the usual trolls out of their caves. I have no positive proof of this, but I'm pretty sure one or other of the Koch Brothers-funded entities has produced a 'Guide for Climate Trolls*' which is circulating somewhere on the dark web. It contains a short compendium of appropriate trolls from which followers are encouraged to select one or two and elaborate to taste. While I have never personally seen this document I am fairly sure I can list its contents. They are presented below, with handy counter-troll responses in brackets, and now numbered for easy reference . Part 1: For the Striking Children Children are easy prey for trolls and bullies because they are smaller than the rest of us.  The guide makes bullying them even easier with some handy tips.  Here are some replies to help you stand up for the small people in your life. 1.1 -  'I bet they drove there in cars.' (Yo...

In my previous post I introduced the question of religious freedom and discussed Israel Folau's case from the point of view of Christian teaching.  Now, on to the heart of the matter. Whether or not Israel Folau has accurately represented the Christian faith, he has clearly presented his own deeply held personal belief. So much so that he has refused any kind of compromise. He is not prepared to make any kind of apology, even a half-hearted one, nor to take down the post, because to do so would go against his own conscience. So it is arguable that his religious freedom is being infringed.  This is the argument he appears set to make in his potentially eye-wateringly expensive crowd-funded legal challenge. So how should we view this claim? To assess it properly we need to think about how human rights work. This is rather complex in Australian law because our human rights legislation is very piecemeal, split across various State and Commonwealth statutes that operate in vario...

Our newly re-elected Commonwealth Government has introduced new legislation to protect religious freedom.  It is not really clear that we need it (in what ways is religious practice currently restricted?) but there are a number of stalking horses in the debate, like whether Christian schools are free to sack gay teachers, whether preachers can say strong anti-Islamic or anti-gay things in public, and whether bakers can be forced to bake gay wedding cakes.  Bigger and noisier than all of these is the Israel Folau affair. All this kind of turns up the heat on religious freedom without necessarily providing much light, so I thought I'd use the Folau business as a way in to talking about the wider question of religious freedom in Australia and how we might approach it sensibly. First of all, by way of clearing the decks, I'd like to address the question of the relationship between Israel's pronouncement and Christianity. For those living under a rock (or perhaps, living i...

It being NAIDOC week, and us all talking about the voice to parliament, treaties and so forth, it's only fair that I should write a review of Sarah Maddison's book, The Colonial Fantasy: Why White Australia Can't Solve Black Problems. Sarah Maddison is Professor of Politics at the University of Melbourne.  She is not an Indigenous person, but she has written and researched extensively on Indigenous politics and a good deal of this book consists of direct quotes from Indigenous authors and leaders.  She doesn't claim to represent or speak for Aboriginal people. She is careful to represent the diversity of Indigenous views rather than pretend to consensus. Still, her extensive quotes show at least that there is no shortage of Indigenous people who share her view, even if others have a different opinion. Why, she asks, after decades of debate and effort, are we not succeeding in solving the issues of inequality that face Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communitie...