Previously Abbott seemed to support Gillard’s proposed change to the constitution to allow the Feds to meddle directly in local government affairs. Now, however, he seems to have started listening to rank and file supporters:
Mr Abbott said it was a ”bit rich” of the government to claim bipartisanship when it had not confirmed what the wording of the referendum would be.
Senator Cory Bernardi has rejected supporting the referendum ‘yes’ case on 2GB tonight.
Background here and here. More transgressions follow.
TONY Abbott will today promise an incoming Coalition government will put forward for consultation, within 12 months of winning office, a draft constitutional amendment recognising Aboriginal people.
An Abbott government would also establish a bipartisan process to assess its chances of success.
I wonder what rank and file Coalition members have to say about this latest left-wing proposal from Abbott? There was near uniform condemnation on the conservative side of politics of the ALP’s working group, which was set-up to address this issue.
Mr Abbott will acknowledge that the difficulty of crafting an amendment that satisfies Aboriginal people while reassuring the wider community “that we are not creating two classes of citizen” should not be underestimated.
Not possible. It would create a modern day aristocracy.
Another sin spotted. I have a feeling that Abbott is a little too ready to please the ABC and MSM over his own supporters.
This is what it might come to.
The laws on Royal succession should be changed to deal with the children of a lesbian Queen in a gay marriage who conceives using donor sperm, the House of Lords has heard.
Father’s are optional extras, along with conception.
Atheist Ron Williams recently sued the Commonwealth in the High Court, claiming that the Government’s chaplains in schools programme was unconstitutional because it violated the constitutional restrictions on public offices not being subject to a religious test. However, while Williams won the case, his basic argument was rejected by the High Court:
In a majority decision earlier today, the High Court decided funding for the chaplaincy program was unconstitutional because of the payment method used – not because of religious reasons.
This has not stopped Williams claiming it as a win against religion.
“The separation of church and state matter, that’s what led us to the constitution,” he told AAP.
If anything the decision might place restrictions on what type of programmes the Government can fund, although this remains unclear at this early stage. The Government is also convinced that a small legal change will permit the programme to continue.
To claim the decision as a victory for the separation between church and state is silly. The government already employs chaplains (in the ADF) and in no way does this decision impact on their employment.
The latest Roy Morgan poll has support for a republic at a devastating low 34 per cent and support for keeping the current constitution at 60 per cent, the highest since 1988.
This would be an ideal time for another referendum, because it would be sure to fail and would end the republican movement for at least another generation.
I’ll take the House of Windsor – despite all their foibles – over the House of Gillard, et al….
Having listened today to Gillard give a child care media conference in which she repeatedly pronounced ‘want to’ as ‘wanna’, it is obvious why Gillard is not attending the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee with her Canadian and NZ counterpart and the Australian GG.
Amongst other reasons, Gillard is thoroughly out classed by the Queen, so it follows Gillard is likely intimidated by the Queen as well. Gillard has previously indicated being uncomfortable talking to people overseas. Gillard is also typical of the left: an unwillingness to accept and submit to their betters, and submit their will to the will of the people.
There are other examples as well: Gillard’s incorrect pronouncement of the word ‘hyperbole’, negotiate, or her ‘we are us’ term.
Gillard has an expensive tertiary education, trained in the legal profession, practiced the law and an experienced politician. So one might expect her to have command of the English language, including grammar and pronouncement. Gillard seems to lack these basic communication skills.
I wonder what book Gillard is reading now? I could suggest a few books to help the PM gain command of the English langauge and communication skills generally.
Yesterday Anthony Albanese made the following comment in the HoR in relation to Craig Thomson:
Madam Deputy Speaker, I do not think it can be let go that the Manager of Opposition Business just spoke about the member for Dobell not having called witnesses. That is the point. This is not a court. This is not somewhere where witnesses are called and come forward and a case is presented. That is the entire point.
The Federal Parliament is a court for its own members. The House can pass a motion recommending that an MP be sentenced to gaol for no longer than 6 months under the Parliamentary Privileges Act and section 49 of the Constitution for breaches of parliamentary privilege. The Speaker can either issue warrants of arrest or fines or both to the affected member.
The legality of the abuse of Parliamentary Privilege is complicated. What is clear is that Parliament can act like a court under the Constitution, and punish a member based – by custom – on the findings of the Privileges Committee.
Thomson therefore can be freely judged by his own peers. MP’s do not have to wait for a court judgement. They are the judge and jury.
Thomson must now survive the ALP dominated Privileges Committee, the NSW and Victorian Police Strike Force Carnarvon and the next election. If he does all – which seems highly unlikely – then he will still face the prospect of a prison sentence being handed down by the HoR when the Coalition assumes power in 2013. Thomson and any other MP that is found to have conspired with him to deceive Parliament will be going to gaol.
UPDATE
There is nothing ridiculous about it. An Act of Parliament and the Constitution permit the HoR to send an MP to gaol. It happened in 1955 to a pair of MPs. No reason it cannot happen again. Covering up fraud in Parliament is no small matter.
UPDATE II
Apparently A Current Affair has tracked down one of Thomson’s hookers and a further transaction made by Thomson. The ex-Hooker has also signed a statutory declaration, the contents of which are still unknown.
The ABC is running a new history series called Australia On Trial. This week was an analysis of the Eureka Rebellion of December 1854. The programme claimed that the rebellion, particularly the trial of the rebels, gave birth to Australian democracy. This is a ridiculous claim, as David Flint has written:
The second Australian Constitutions Act, 1850, “An Act for the better Government of Her Majesty’s Australian Colonies”, brought similar reforms to the other colonies (except for the Moreton Bay district – Queensland – which was attached to the New South Wales legislative council until 1859). This act was extremely important. It empowered the various colonies to draft their own constitutions, although they were still to be approved by the Colonial Office in London before being presented for the Queen’s assent. The New South Wales and Victorian Constitutions received royal assent on July 16, 1855.
To strike down another myth: the bills were in London well before the Eureka Stockade. Whatever the Eureka Stockade achieved it was not democracy.
It was the intent of the colonies to instigate a franchise well before the Eureka Rebellion began.
It is also with some irony that the unions today wave the Eureka flag as their own, when it was used by foreign small business mining operators during the rebellion; People not exactly aligned with the union movement.
Next week is the Myall Creek massacre, which Keith Windschuttle has claimed is the only genuine frontier massacre that we know of. See what spin the propaganda chiefs at the ABC put on it.
Take one Anita Heiss, a cultural welfare junkie who is paid $90k by the Australia Council to write about how tough life is living in Paris at tax-payers expense. What a rort? Heiss also happens to have some distant aboriginal genealogy who sued to shut down Andrew Bolt for having the temerity to question her aboriginality and the special access this gives her to Federal revenue. Thanks to a politicised judiciary, a poorly written Federal law and a couple of mistakes Bolt made in his article, Heiss and her fellow revenue rustlers won the case. Both the ABC and Random House shut down comments on her latest book, “Am I black enough for you?”, Amazon is open for business though:
Heiss, whose memoir is partly a response to Bolt, did not want to comment last night and Amazon.com in the US had not responded last night.
Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner, Helen Szoke, said racist views published outside Australia but accessible here posed a growing – and challenging – problem.
‘Racist’ being used in a fairly meaningless way to shut down dissenting opinion. Apparently the books are very poorly written as well, Catallaxy Files:
That she received a $90 000 grant from the federal government’s Australia Council for the Arts to write Am I Black Enough for You? lends support to Campbell Newman’s decision to scrap the Premier’s Literature Award.
At least law and order is being maintained somewhere:
AT LEAST four people have been arrested during a police and City of Perth ranger operation to evict people from an illegal Aboriginal tent embassy.
About 40 police backed by the the riot squad, the dog squad and a police helicopter descended on the area and police say three people have been arrested for disorderly conduct and one person for a suspected assault on a police officer.
The Federation can work.