Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews faces a massive backlash over the sacking of the board of the Country Fire Authority (CFA) after it refused to sign off on his plan to subordinate it to the United Firefighters Union, led by Andrews’ Labor ally, Peter Marshall. Malcolm fights with CFA firies Mr Andrews had earlier forced the…
It is a sign of the desperation in the dairy industry that thousands of dairy farmers from around the country have taken to the streets of the capital cities to protest against policies that have driven their industry to the brink of bankruptcy. Milking an entire industry These protests have not been organised through the…
In News Weekly May 7, 2016, I referred to the Building Respectful Relationships (BRR) program, which is purportedly designed to prevent domestic/family violence. BRR is solidly based on queer gender theory: “Students need to understand that gender is not fixed and that as young people they can resist traditional notions of what it means to…
Queer gender theory is at the core of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia program, says Monash University feminist writer Laura McNally. Many genders: but only one reality. McNally says that if this term is unfamiliar, there is a good reason: “Queer theory is a highly contested and relatively recent development in the sociology academy. “Queer theory propositions – such as the 51 gender categories, and growing – are more likely to be found discussed on Tumblr than in any empirical study. That hasn’t stopped them from being rolled out into schools in various countries,”[1] In the Safe Schools Coalition Australia…
We are told the Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) program is to prevent bullying of GLBT students. It was certainly sold as an anti-bullying program. Staff from the Australian Research Centre into Sex Health and Society (ARCSHS) at La Trobe University in Melbourne, which produced the Safe Schools program, identified the safety theme (that is, “Safe” Schools) as an effective marketing strategy: “The marketing of this research was consciously directed towards creating and supporting processes of social change. … The safety paradigm endowed the cause with respectability; anyone could get behind such a banner without fear of suspicion and criticism.”…
Since the Canadian Supreme Court overturned the protections in law that prohibited both assisted suicide and euthanasia in February 2015, Canada has been in free fall. Quebec went on to create its own permissive regime, which was suspended and then re-instated by the courts. No consensus has risen yet on the form of national legislation to give voice to the will of the courts, and stakeholders both pro and con are engaging in a tug-of-war between protecting vulnerable people on the one hand, and open season on the other. It reminded me of the time of the passage of…