There are competing understandings of “human rights”. Read on for cogent analysis of human rights issues today.
The Australian Government agreed in August to introduce a new thematic sanctions regime targeting serious human rights violations and abuses, and serious corruption. This regime will be part of broader reforms to the existing autonomous sanctions framework. The decision arose from a unanimous report of Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade,…
In the early 1900s, women were out in the streets in Britain and the United States and Australia demonstrating for women’s right to vote and to be recognised as full citizens. Since then, much has been done to allow women to reach their full potential and not to be defined and restricted by irrelevant stereotypes.…
Widespread and apparently spontaneous protests erupted across Cuba on July 11 and the days following, the first public protests in a generation against the Cuban Communist Party, which has ruled Cuba with an iron fist since 1959. Interestingly, they occurred just months after the retirement of Raul Castro, who, with his elder brother Fidel, had…
by Katherine Treadaway We all assume that our democracy, flawed as it is, is fundamentally set up correctly. That checks and balances are in place, and that everything, even if not always to our liking, is fair. The process around the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill (VAD) currently passing through Queensland Parliament puts this assertation in doubt. It all started with Greens Member for Maiwar Michael Berkman making the decision to follow the Parliament’s Health Committee – assigned to review the Bill and to report its findings by August 20, 2021 – to its regional hearings like some kind of Assisted Dying groupie. He stated that, having worked on a previous health committee which had covered an earlier inquiry into euthanasia, he wanted to “participate closely in these hearings because…
In the first part of this article, Professor Margaret Somerville explains in layman’s terms what mitochondrial DNA donation is and how it is hoped that the intervention will prevent mitochondrial disease in children receiving the donation. She highlights, however, that the technique involves changing the genes we inherit from our parents and pass on to…
By Daniel Torbey If you took a human sperm and a human egg and left them on opposite sides of a room, they would stay that way and nothing would ever happen, save for their eventual expiration. Now, take the very same sperm and egg, have them fuse together in a woman’s womb (an event…
Photo from Don’t Screen Us Out via Flickr. Three people have begun a case before Britain’s High Court to challenge the law allowing the termination up to birth of a foetus with Down’s syndrome (also known as trisomy 21) – a person with an extra 21st chromosome. The case has been taken by Heidi Crowter,…
s One of the issues overtaken by the advent of covid19 in 2020 was a federal Religious Discrimination Bill. It is now three years since the Federal Coalition promised, during the marriage debate in 2017, that once the Marriage Act amendments were voted on, the consequences for religious freedom would be dealt with by legislation. No steps have been taken to finalise and introduce a bill into parliament since December 2019. There are reports that it is back on the political agenda and, with a federal election looming, it is important that this happen before it simply becomes an election promise.
By Hannah Grey The South Australian Liberal Party recently took it upon itself to refuse the applications of 150 Christian-identifying applicants to the party – and to demand that another 400 sign statutory declarations swearing their loyalty to the Party. They cited fears that these new applicants had “ulterior motives” and were out to do…
The 23rd Rally for Life in Western Australia on June 16 attracted an estimated 2,000 people, who gathered outside Parliament House in Perth despite the cold, to show their disapproval of the current abortion laws, and support for the vulnerable unborn children, the courageous mothers, and the sacredness of life. There was a notably large crowd of young people present at the rally and some processed through the city to Parliament House while praying the Rosary, holding signs and banners. The night was co-hosted by Maryka Groenewald, director of the Australian Christians Party, and Darryl Budge, director of FamilyVoice WA. Their work and dedication in being a “voice for the voiceless” makes events like this possible, along with members of the WA Coalition for the Defence of Human Life who…
“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” This quote is often misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but is directly applicable to the concerns that have resulted in the drafting of the Human Rights (Children Born Alive Protection) Bill 2021. To protect its most vulnerable, in 1990,…
By Barclay McGain Another week, another litany of confected outrage from the Queensland Labor Government. This is same bunch who cry out in “disgust” when conservatives so much as breathe the wrong way. This time it was Minister for Youth Affairs Meaghan Scanlon. In her maiden speech, Scanlon claimed to “value the contribution of all…
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) continues aggressively to push to expand its military presence in the South China Sea, and threatens to invade Taiwan, which has been independent of Beijing for over a century, the political repression of the six million people of Hong Kong continues to worsen. Over recent weeks, Beijing has imposed a new immigration law, to take effect from August 1, which gives the Government power to control both entry and exit of Hong Kongers by administrative action. It has also attacked the President of the Hong Kong Bar Association, Paul Harris, a British-born lawyer who has lived in Hong Kong for over 25 years, describing him as an “anti-Chinese politician” for having criticised the so-called “national security law”, and for representing pro-democracy activists who have…
Pay attention all you who have eyes to read. Changes to state laws in Australia are infectious. So this could be coming to your state. An Andrew’s Labor Government “Inquiry into Anti-Vilification Protections” in Victorian laws has produced a 308-page Report containing 36 recommendations which are wide-ranging and raise many concerns. Victoria’s current vilification law, the Racial and Religious Tolerance Act, covers race and religion. The Inquiry recommends adding new protected attributes including gender identity, which opens up a whole new area of differences of opinions and beliefs.
Faced with the arrest and detention of pro-democracy lawmakers in Hong Kong, Australia and the United States have sent the clearest signals to Beijing that they will stand alongside the six million people of Hong Kong whose freedoms are being suffocated.
Robert Spalding retired from the United States Air Force as a brigadier general after 25 years of service. He is a former China strategist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, as well as senior defence official and Defence attaché to China. He earned his doctorate in economics and mathematics from the University of Missouri, and is fluent in Mandarin. He has also flown stealth bombers. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
The installation of the Biden Administration in the United States has been accompanied by increased pressure on the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong, increased military action by Beijing in the strategic Taiwan Straits, and a military coup in Burma, where the military has close links to Beijing.
Beginning with the federal Racial Discrimination Act in 1975, over the 1980s and 1990s, the federal government and all Australian states and territories passed anti-discrimination laws. These laws contain “vilification” provisions that variously make it illegal to offend, insult, humiliate or hold up to ridicule or to incite hatred or violence towards another person on the basis of a “protected attribute”.
Covid19 is likely to continue as a major domestic and international disruptor in 2021. While covid19 vaccines give some hope, they may be no panacea. The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been remarkably good at preventing serious illness.
Listen to the podcast: The Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Bill 2020 has been introduced into the Victorian Parliament. So, is it clear what is to be banned? Well, not really. There are a lot of questions. A change or suppression practice is defined as “a practice or conduct directed towards a person, whether…
The ACT and Queensland have just passed laws banning “conversion therapy”. Conversion therapy is defined as “a treatment or other practice … the purported purpose of which is [to suppress or] change a person’s sexuality or (sexual orientation) or gender identity”.
Following the adoption of a draconian security law originating in Beijing and adopted by the unelected Chief Executive of Hong Kong in June, the Hong Kong Government has proceeded with a multi-pronged attack on free speech, aimed at silencing criticism and stifling dissent.
by Peter Westmore Human rights organisations and politicians from the democracies have called for the 2022 Winter Olympics, due to be held in Beijing, to be moved to another venue in another country. The move follows international opposition to Beijing’s clampdown on human rights, including the persecution of minority Uyghurs, Falun Gong practitioners and Christians across China, and Beijing’s aggressive foreign policy, ranging from its creation of militarised islands in the South China Sea, cyber espionage on a massive scale, suppression in Hong Kong, and economic imperialism. According to CNN, 160 human-rights organisations from across the world have written to International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach calling for the IOC to withdraw accreditation for the 2022 Winter Games. In a joint letter, they wrote: “The IOC’s reputation was indelibly tarnished…
by Terri M. Kelleher Tasmanian Senator Claire Chandler is the latest public figure to fall foul of vilification provisions in anti-discrimination laws (that is vilification laws). She had a complaint laid against her to the Tasmanian Human Rights Commission for comments in an article she wrote about women’s sport being for biological women. The complaint…
by Terri M, Kelleher Amendments proposed to the Victorian Public Health and Wellbeing Act (PHWA) to further expand covid19 emergency powers have caused a public outcry. The Omnibus (Emergency Measures) and Other Acts Amendment Bill 2020 (the Bill) would amend the PHWA to allow the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) to appoint any person he/she “considers appropriate … based on the person’s skills, attributes, experience or otherwise …” as an “authorised officer” with the intrusive powers that bestows on that person. “Authorised officers” do not have to be police, who at least surely have training in the legalities and practicalities of law enforcement. If they could be private security guards, that would not make Victorians feel very confident as their role in quarantine duties at…
(NB: This is a considerably updated version of the article headed “Rugby Australia’s Complete Humiliation? Not Yet”, published on October 7, 2020) Rugby Australia (RA) has lost its major sponsor, its star player and its chief executive officer, has no free-to-air television deal and faces complaints from its rival across the ditch while its transgender player policy is now at odds with the policy recently announced by World Rugby. RA’s most celebrated player, Israel Folau, was sacked from the sport after major sponsor Qantas pressured the game’s officials over Folau expressing his views about heaven, hell and the afterlife. Qantas was more interested in forcing its LGBT code of conduct on rugby, and interfering in Folau’s right to free speech on his personal social media, than ensuring fans were treated…
ENVIRONMENTALISTS STAND UP FOR NUCLEAR Environmentalists have long promoted renewable energy sources as better for nature. But a new study suggests that the expansion of mining for the materials to make solar panels and wind turbines may pose a greater threat than climate change to endangered species. “Most mining areas (82 per cent) target materials needed for renewable energy production,” note the authors in the peer-reviewed journal, Nature Communications. They add: “These new threats to biodiversity may surpass those averted by climate change mitigation.” Meanwhile, environmental resistance is blocking and slowing the expansion of industrial wind and solar energy projects. In Britain, Greenpeace has opposed a huge new solar farm, as “vast continuous fields of panels on agricultural land’ are not “the best way to go solar”. New York environ-mentalists fear large-scale solar…
By Symeon J. Thompson There is a tendency to see totalitarian societies as the apex of efficiency and order – they are, after all, meant to be societies of total control. We see this repeatedly in fiction. George Orwell’s 1984, memorably filmed by Michael Radford with John Hurt as Winston Smith and Richard Burton as O’Brien, depicts a brutal future of degradation, depression and control. The state is not satisfied with external control. It has to control the mind and the spirit, and is willing to set traps to manipulate the people, just so it can punish them. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World takes a different tack. There is still complete control, but it is a control exercised through physical pleasure, rather than perpetual pain. The minds of the citizenry…
DANIEL RUDD: Calling a Church to Justice by Gary B. Agee Liturgical Press, Collegeville, Minnesota Paperback: 113 pages Price: AUD$32.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel This short biography recounts the life and work of journalist and civil-rights advocate Daniel Rudd. It is published in the “People of God: Remarkable lives, heroes of faith” series produced by the Liturgical Press, a series that showcases the lives of prominent 20th and 21st-century Catholics such as Popes John XXIII and Paul VI. The author, Gary Agee, teaches church history at Anderson University, Indiana, is a pastor in the Church of God denomination, and is the author of numerous works, including a longer study of Rudd’s life and work. Described as “the greatest Negro Catholic in America” at the height of his public career…
by Robin Speed Has the Victorian Charter of Human Rights been found wanting in the covid19 crisis? The Charter was claimed (rightfully) as a landmark in Australia’s constitutional and political history. And the Victorian Labor Party, which nurtured the Charter through Parliament, had every reason to be proud of it. Then Attorney General, Rob Hulls, rightly said at the time: “This is a significant day in the history of the Victorian Parliament and, in fact, in the history of Victoria itself. We have a proud heritage of reform that puts the fair go front and centre and, in this tradition, this bill is the first human-rights legislation enacted in any state in Australia. Having drawn on the experience of comparable jurisdictions such as New Zealand, the UK and the Australian…
by Peter Kelleher On Thursday August 27, 2020, the ACT became the second jurisdiction in Australia, after Queensland only two weeks earlier, to pass legislation banning “conversion therapy”. In an effort to persuade the Chief Minister of the ACT, Andrew Barr, to postpone the legislation until he and his colleagues and advisers were able to be more fully informed of what the social and medical ramifications of the law would be, Professor John Whitehall wrote to Mr Barr on the Tuesday before the bill was debated. The direct object of Professor Whitehall’s letter was to point out the consequences for sufferers of childhood gender dysphoria that a ban on “conversion therapy” would entail. Professor Whitehall wrote as national chairman of the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship of Australia. Professor Whitehall…
The Victorian Upper House voted in the early hours of September 2 to allow an extension of the period for which a state of emergency in Victoria can be declared, and emergency powers exercised. Despite the number of covid19 infections in Victoria declining, Premier Daniel Andrews sought to extend the period from six months maximum to 18 months maximum. Taking into account the six months already served, this would have given him another 12 months extension, up to September 2021. There was widespread opposition from the public, with MPs reporting receiving thousands of emails and phone calls asking them to oppose it. Doctors signed an Open Letter to Daniel Andrews calling on the Government to allow Parliament to openly discuss and debate appropriate medical plans to manage the current covid19…
by Terri M. Kelleher Women and their allies around the world are joining together to oppose transgender, male-to-females, in women’s sport: that is biological males competing in women’s sporting competitions. Women’s sporting competitions were introduced in the first place to allow them to compete on a fair and equitable basis. Biological males have unfair advantages in strength, reach and muscle mass over biological women: all things News Weekly has covered. Why is this issue important? Because biological males competing in women’s sports is a hot spot in the transgender wars. (Read more about the AFA’s campaign) Any adult has the freedom to choose to live as the opposite sex and should be treated with respect, as everyone should be. However, it is not fair or equitable to demand that they…
Terri M. Kelleher The Victorian Andrew’s Government has announced a “whole-of-government LGBTIQ strategy”. Minister for Equality Martin Foley issued a media release dated June 12 saying that Victorians will have the opportunity to shape the state’s equality agenda for years to come with the opening of “public consultation on the Victorian Government’s first ever whole-of-government…
by Terri M. Kelleher Bostock case in U.S. extended meaning of “sex” to sexual orientation and gender identity Catholic hospitals under pressure to provide transgender surgeries, which offend against Catholic teaching on the integrity of the body Exemptions for religious organisations from sex discrimination is under threat in Australia Cases of transgender activists suing Catholic hospitals in the United States are likely to have repercussions on anti-discrimination exemptions in Australia. Less than one month after the U.S. Supreme Court decided in the Bostock case that the word “sex” in Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment, includes sexual orientation and gender identity, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has sued a Catholic hospital for refusing to remove the perfectly healthy uterus of a woman…
The American animated sitcom South Park can be extremely crude and on the nose with its dark humour, but it is also incredibly prescient in its political and social commentary, highlighting absurdities in modern Western society. This week, in the episode “Strong Woman” (2 min video), South Park depicted the gross unfairness of allowing biological men identifying as women into female sports competitions. South Park Elementary’s principal Peter Charles is known as PC Principal for his dedication to “bring South Park into 2015”, implementing political correctness by eradicating any racist, sexist or otherwise discriminatory stereotypes in the town. He is truly disappointed when his girlfriend Vice-Principal Strong Woman (mother of his PC Babies) inevitably loses her title at the Strong Woman Competition to a trans competitor, “Heather”. Heather transitioned merely…
Our taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, the ABC, has recently launched another intriguing survey about Australians’ attitudes, concerns and beliefs. There are two questions that provide some insight into the topic of unjust discrimination against religious Australians. Similar in scope to “Vote Compass”, the survey, “Australia Talks”, has collected some statistics worthy of mention. It is unclear whether the results published have been weighted for age, location and sex in order to ensure accurate representation of a cross-section of Australians. However, at 52,000 respondents, assuming measures have been taken to prevent fraudulent or repeat responses, the data should be reliable due to the sample size alone. On religion, one question asks whether “religion is important to you”. The results are that 50 per cent claim religion is “not important at all”; 20…
Dr John Whitehall, professor of pediatrics and child health at the University of Western Sydney, has been a lonely medical voice in the public square on the question of gender confusion in children. Professor Whitehall wrote to the federal Health Minister, Greg Hunt, in early September calling for a formal parliamentary inquiry into “the rapid rise of childhood gender dysphoria in Australia and the lack of scientific basis for current medical treatment”. A group of six doctors from five states set up a website on September 22, GenderInquiry.com, to allow Australian doctors to sign a joint letter of support for Professor Whitehall’s proposal. In less than four days we had 257 signatories, including 20 professors and associate professors, 20 psychiatrists including nine child psychiatrists, 14 pediatricians and many other specialties…
I interviewed Jon K. Uhler recently on the We Are Change Melbourne YouTube Channel about his work at Pennsylvania State Corrections Department, where he worked for 11 years as prison counsellor to sex offenders, serial killers and pedophiles. Imagine being prevented from saving your child from an electric shock, and you will have an idea of how those parents feel whose children get entangled in the transgender agenda. Unlike academics who research these criminals via textbooks, Jon got to know these men closely, interviewed them daily and had access to their files that academics don’t have. He began his career working with victims of sexual violence and founded the organisation, Survivor Support. Serial killer Ted Bundy confessed in his last interview before being executed that every violent criminal had a…
There was applause in the lower house of the NSW Parliament on Thursday, September 26, as the Abortion Law Reform Act 2019 passed its final hurdle after weeks of protests and more than 70 hours of debate in both houses. Premier Gladys Berejiklian was not present for the final vote. Introduced on August 1 by independent MP Alex Greenwich, it first passed the lower house by 59 votes to 31 on August 8. A number of amendments were debated but most were defeated, a notable exception being Attorney-General Mark Speakman’s amendment to require informed consent. The bill then passed the upper house 26 votes to 14 on Wednesday, September 25, following nearly 40 hours of debate – reportedly the third longest debate in the state’s Legislative Council since its inception in 1824.…
While the feminist revolution took decades to take hold and for society to adapt, the new transgender revolution is being imposed by stealth and subversion with such speed that the broader society has no real concept of what is being thrust upon it. And while feminism (broadly defined as equality of the sexes) had a powerful and logical inevitability to it, the transgender revolution seeks to impose societal changes to language, customs, attitudes and behaviour that, at best, are contradictory and reality defying but, at worst, are dangerous and life threatening. Thus the serious and thoughtful contribution to debate by organisations associated with this publication is a both a welcome and important one. In a joint submission to Attorney-General Christian Porter’s consultation on his proposed Religious Freedom Bill, the National…
I stare blankly at my screen; I stare into the sea of pastel pink that seems only to stare back at me. It is offensive to the eyes, like a battering ram of pale hues too similar to one another. My eyes seek refuge in the small white box on the left of the page. A discordant pink creature waves at me from within. Below the picture is a little bio that reads: “kai – 15 – nb boy – they/he – autistic – bpd.” I put aside my questions (how can you be a non-binary boy?) and focus on what I need to. “Autistic,” he claims to be, just as about 30 others have claimed to be as well, and these were all that I could access within my…
The Commonwealth Government is right to order an inquiry into the safety and ethics of transgenderism. Across Australia, the number of young people undergoing radical and often irreversible hormonal treatment and radical surgery is skyrocketing. Given the promotion of gender theory, illustrated by the Marxist-inspired Safe Schools program that’s been operating over the last five years, it is no wonder that in one year 2,415 children were referred for gender transition procedures. Victorian Premier Daniel Andews, left, with Roz Ward. And it’s not just in Australia that the issue is of grave concern. In Britain and America, such are the increasing numbers of children wanting to change their birth sex, that warning lights are flashing. In England, for example, there is increasing public concern at the dramatic rise in the…
If Prime Minister Scott Morrison is “mystified” at Cricket Australia’s “heavy handed”, “sledgehammer” policies supporting men who identify as women playing in the women’s competition, he should turn his attention to the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and the federal Sex Discrimination Act that together are driving these policies. Cricket Australia policy follows the recent Guidelines for the inclusion of transgender and gender diverse people in sport, produced by the AHRC and the Coalition of Major Professional and Participation Sports (CMPPS), and supported by Federal Sports Minister Richard Colbeck. COMPPS includes all football codes, cricket, netball and tennis, covering 16,000 clubs with 9 million participants. Federal Sports Minister Richard Colbeck Cricket Australia’s new transgender and gender-diverse inclusion policy says that biological males have only to self-identify as female, and reduce…
For three months, huge crowds of up to two million people have protested in Hong Kong against Communist Beijing’s efforts to impose sweeping curbs on freedom of speech in the territory. Hong Kong was a British territory that was handed back to China in 1997, but with promises from Communist Beijing to respect the long tradition of free speech, its independent legal system and particularly to have a directly elected chief executive and a fully elected local parliament. Hong Kong is tiny: one-ninth the size of Sydney, with a population of 7.4 million, 1.6 times Sydney’s population. The vast majority of Hong Kong’s population are people who escaped the brutal communist rule of Mao Zedong in China, or are their descendants and remember their family’s escape. Or, more recently, they…
On Thursday August 1, in the NCC office in Perth, Professor of Constitutional Law Augusto Zimmermann addressed an audience of more than 60 NCC youth on the topics of freedom of religion and freedom of speech. Many of the young people were university students concerned about the erosion of the freedoms we enjoy in this state and nation. These freedoms are not written in law but exist in our society; and they are freedoms that have, of late, come under attack. Evidence of this comes from the students and young professionals themselves asking the questions. “Often I have an opinion, but how much of it am I allowed to share? (We are not talking about hate speech or the like.) Rather, if I have a conscientious objection to certain policies…
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced the creation of a Commission on Unalienable Rights. Pompeo said it is to “generate a serious debate” about what human rights really are; “to provide fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights”. In view of the proliferation of legislatively created rights over the past 20 to 25 years it is certainly an issue to be given serious attention. In Australia, in particular, anti-discrimination laws come to mind as examples of these legislated rights. These laws, federal and state, began by making it unlawful to “discriminate” on the grounds of sex, race, disability, age, religion and marital status, attributes all people share. However, in 2013 the federal Sex…
Four years ago, I wrote about my decision to live as a woman in The New York Times, writing that I had wanted to live “authentically as the woman that I have always been” and had “effectively traded my white male privilege to become one of America’s most hated minorities”. Three years ago, I decided that I was neither male nor female, but non-binary – and made headlines after an Oregon judge agreed to let me identify as a third sex, not male or female. Now, I want to live again as the man that I am. I’m one of the lucky ones. Despite participating in medical transgenderism for six years, my body is still intact. Most people who desist from transgender identities after gender changes can’t say the same.…
Like many ethnic minorities in strategically important regions of China, China’s Uyghurs have been on the losing end of an ethnic power play. The Uyghurs (pronounced “we-gars”) are a Turkic people who constitute 45 per cent of the people of Xinjiang, which has a total estimated population of 24 million. A “re-education” camp for Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. The Uyghurs do not speak Chinese as a native language, they speak Turkish. The Turks conquered Anatolia, which was called Asia Minor in ancient times. Although the Turks are Muslims, in ancient times Anatolia was a centre of Christianity. The Turks originated in central Asia and the Ottoman Empire, created in 1299, endured until it collapsed after World War I. The Uyghurs are Muslims and have been in a state of rebellion…
A WORLD MADE NEW: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by Mary Ann Glendon Random House, New York Paperback: 342 pages Price: AUD$36 Reviewed by Madeleine van der Linden The creation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was a momentous achievement, as nations tried desperately to create peace and safety in a world shattered by World War II. It was the first time that an effort had been made to clarify and ratify the rights of man on a global scale. In the light of the atrocities carried out during World War II, the United Nations Commission on Human Rights sought to ensure that never again would people be deprived of liberty and life as they had been in that war or during the Cold War…
Restricting single-sex sports to children of one sex under 12 years of age is illegal under federal law, while in rugby union, girls and women can be expelled from the game, like Israel Folau, for protesting on their social media against biological males who identify as female playing in their competition. The Israel Folau case is just the tip of the iceberg as laws, regulations and sporting codes shut down freedom of speech and attack women’s rights. Gender ideology in sport is now being pushed by the Australian Human Rights Commission, imposed by professional and amateur sporting bodies, and enforced by federal law. In 2013, the federal Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) was amended to give protected attribute status to a person’s gender identity over their biological sex. With…
On June 10, 2019, the Vatican issued a new document to provide Catholic educators guidance on dealing with gender issues. The document is entitled, “Male and Female He Created Them: Towards a Path of Dialogue on the Question of Gender Theory in Education”. Despite its sometimes rather archaic, theological and philosophical language, which can make it hard to read, the reader can manage to make out statements of the Church’s teaching on the nature of human sexuality: “The data of biological and medical science shows that ‘sexual dimorphism’ (that is, the sexual difference between men and women) can be demonstrated scientifically by such fields as genetics, endocrinology and neurology.” (p13) “There is a need to reaffirm the metaphysical roots of sexual difference, as an anthropological refutation of attempts to negate…
In the second part of this two-part series examining feminist claims for gender equality, Michael Ord considers family structural relations, including the special needs of women and the distinctions of men and women, and warns that feminist activism is taking society to a critical crossroad. Finally, he reflects on what feminism should be. Does society acknowledge that women have special needs that society is obliged in distributive justice to satisfy? Traditionally, it was believed that women, because of their differences from men and liability to pregnancy, had need of various protections not supplied to men, and the Christian Church and early feminists worked for these protections. Family structural relations In the recent past, many features of other cultures and of our own were viewed as evidence of patriarchal oppression. However,…
Feminists demand gender equality in public roles in society. In this two-part review, Michael Ord seeks to understand these demands. Are they genuine claims seeking the common good? Or are they an ideological caricature seeking personal interest and privilege for a select few? The Office for Women in the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet was set up to advance gender equality and improve the lives of Australian women. Its aims are to strengthen women’s economic security, including workforce participation, support more women into leadership positions, and ensure that women and their children are safe from violence. In response, corporations in which men predominate are implementing initiatives to deal with the perceived wrongs of gender imbalance. Corporate leaders are required to report on the progress of the initiatives. Typically,…
Asia Bibi, the Pakistani woman sentenced to death for blasphemy in 2010, but freed after an appeal to Pakistan’s Supreme Court was upheld in 2018, has left Pakistan to live in Canada, after Islamist extremists threatened to murder her. Asia Bibi Apart from international pressure, Asia Bibi owes her freedom to her courageous lawyer, who himself has faced death threats for defending the Christian woman, the judges of Pakistan’s Supreme Court, who also faced death threats, and the Pakistan Government, which assisted her to leave Pakistan. The case arose in the Punjab, in eastern Pakistan in 2009. Asia Bibi, a farm worker, offered water to a number of her fellow workers. They refused to drink it, saying it was defiled because a Christian had handled it. A verbal exchange ensued,…
Following widespread public concerns over threats to religious freedom during the federal election, the Morrison Government has promised a religious discrimination act by July. Human rights law is a tricky, problematic area of law. As militant secularists want to restrict religious freedoms by making religious freedom legislation as ineffective as possible, there are concerns that a new law could reduce, rather than comprehensively protect, freedoms. Consider the complexity of issues with the 2013 changes to the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA)that made a person’s gender identity and sexual orientation protected attributes. Effectively, the Act’s protections for a person’s gender identity allow a biological boy/man who self-identifies as female to claim the same rights as girls/women. All that’s required for a sex/gender change is a statement from a registered medical practitioner…
Answers to questions asked in Western Australia’s Parliament have revealed that 59 adolescents received Stage 2 medical intervention for childhood gender dysphoria at Perth Children’s Hospital in 2018 – treatment that is at best experimental and at worst medically negligent. Those answers also revealed that the average cost of that treatment was $7,225. But it is worth pausing to consider what the true cost is. The evidence that supports medical intervention for childhood gender dysphoria is disconcertingly scant. Specific areas of uncertainty include the effect of pubertal suppression during a critical window of time in which the adolescent brain is developing and bone density is accruing. Serious health concerns are associated with puberty-suppressing hormones, including decreased bone mineral density, increased likelihood of venous thromboembolic events, development of an abnormal lipid…
Bishop Peter J. Elliott delivered the following article as a speech at the National Civic Council’s Annual Conference in Melbourne last February. In it, he outlines a two-part strategy for families to adopt to ride out and thrive amid the tempest of the Sexual Revolution as that revolution gathers fury against Christianity and the family in particular. In recent years I have been working on a book on the “Sexual Revolution”, its history, ideologies and impact on us all. This project helped me to understand that the Sexual Revolution in its current aggressive and deranged stage (transgenderism and LGBT) is part of a wider social revolution, the long-term project of libertarians, spanning the hard left and the soft right. Powerful, well-placed and well-funded forces are at work. Those who know…
In 1965, legendary American conservative publisher, author and television personality William F. Buckley Jr surprised the world by running for the mayoralty of New York City. It was described as a “quixotic” campaign and drew forth a curious response from Buckley when he was asked: “What is the first thing you will do if you win the election?” He replied: “Demand a recount!” Mercifully, my attempt to win the New South Wales state seat of Lismore at the March election did not require me to “demand a recount”. I came last! Lismore is a broad sweep of an electorate. The main towns are Lismore (of course), Murwillumbah, Kyogle and Tenterfield. And, yes, Nimbin. Geographically, the wisdom of those who oversee electoral distributions is not obvious. There is very little community…
Labor and Greens promise end to exemptions from gender laws for religious schools Parental liberty to choose the religious and moral education of their children is trampled Duty of care for non-transgender children is fatally compromised It is a sad reality that in Australian law there is an absence of strong protections for freedom of belief. Indeed, as some leading lawyers have commented, religious freedom has been reduced to tenuous exemptions in anti-discrimination laws introduced since the 1980s. Now, key exemptions in the federal Sex Discrimination Act (SDA), that allowed faith-based schools to enrol and employ people according to their religious beliefs, are under serious threat. The Labor Party and the Greens are committed to removing these exemptions in the next Parliament. The SDA was originally passed in 1984…
Liberal Speaker Sue Hickey helped Labor, Greens get laws through Parents can leave newborn’s sex blank on birth certificates Liberal Government has promised to repeal the laws 70 per cent of Tasmanians opposed the changes Under radical changes to Tasmanian laws, birth certificates will be able to recognise a person as non-binary (other than male or female) and parents can exclude recognition of sex on their newborn’s birth certificate. The changes were rushed through the Tasmanian Parliament by Labor, the Greens and Liberal Speaker Sue Hickey in the House of Assembly and by Labor and four independents in the Legislative Council. Background The Tasmanian Liberal Government introduced the Justice and Related Legislation (Marriage Amendments) Bill 2018 into the House of Assembly on October 16 last year. The Bill aimed…
Disabled women, single mothers, survivors of the sex trade and domestic violence were among the party threatened by activists Trans activists and sex-trade lobby protesters seem to have no other purpose than to silence women who speak out Friday March 8 was the Melbourne International Women’s Day (IWD) March. A global protest was planned via social media to march to end sex trafficking and calling for legislation for the Nordic Model for dealing with prostitution. The march attracted around 11,000 people and our small group consisted of 14 feminists. The organising committee had planned a harassment campaign targeting us. We were subjected to verbal abuse, physical assault and theft, and made to feel very unwelcome. The event page for the march advertises that it is inclusive of all women.…
PIONEER PRIESTS AND MAKESHIFT ALTARS: A History of Catholicism in the Thirteen Colonies by Fr Charles P. Connor EWTN Publishing, Irondale, Alabama Paperback: 272 pages Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Michael E. Daniel Central to the foundation story of the United States of America are the voyage of the Mayflower in 1620, and the subsequent establishment of Massachusetts by English Puritans. In popular consciousness, colonists who left Britain for the fledgling North American colonies from 1620 to 1640 – such as this reviewer’s American ancestors – did so because they were non-conforming Protestants escaping religious persecution by the government for failing to adhere to the Church of England. The author, Fr Charles P. Connor – a priest of the Diocese of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and a regular presenter on the Eternal Word Television…
Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has released a media statement relating to so-called “gay conversion therapy”, promising to outlaw therapies offered to people with unwanted same-sex attraction. This sets off my antennae as I am a male who throughout his entire childhood and early adulthood believed himself to have been “born gay”. As a contented gay male I entered into regular therapy in early adulthood. The goal was not to change sexuality (I didn’t believe that was necessary and was told categorically by my LGBTQ elders that it was not even possible), but rather to deal with some of the poor boundaries I experienced in my friendships. As I stepped over the therapist’s threshold, it was of course impossible to leave behind any part of my character or life experience. All…
It is time we put the word “rights” to bed, at least in its present conceptualisation. It has ceased to have any serious moral, social or political meaning. As now used, it is merely to assert an individual’s or minority group’s demand to be privileged in some marginal proclivity above the rest of society. It is wielded like an omnipotent decree, the epitome of righteous principle, pure and unchallengeable but, in fact, it has become entirely unethical, a tool of social bullies. Thus claimed, the “right” demands more than the freedom to exercise it. It also asks society to reorganise itself and deny itself to secure this proclivity and privilege. And while we are at it, we should retire “equality” too, as at present notionalised. Let us have back, for…
chimera noun 1. (In Greek mythology) a fire-breathing female monster with a lion’s head, a goat’s body, and a serpent’s tail. 2. A thing which is hoped for but is illusory or impossible to achieve. Synonyms: illusion, fantasy, delusion, dream, fancy, figment of the imagination, will-o’-the-wisp, phantom, mirage; ignis fatuus As a developed Western nation that is a party to many international treaties recognising freedom of thought, conscience and religion, the lack of any real national protections of religious freedom in Australia is surprising. While the Australian Constitution does contain one provision relating to religious freedom which ensures that the nation will not have a state religion and that religious tests will not be imposed for employment by the state, that provision has never successfully been used to prevent…
Australia faces a broad range of challenges in 2019 and beyond. The political challenges reflect deeper conflicts fracturing the nation’s cultural cohesion. The federal election will dominate politics in the first half of the year. After three years of divisions in the Liberals, the Labor Party is riding high in the polls. GetUp has announced plans to target Coalition MPs who defend family, faith and freedoms. As about 25 per cent of Australians no longer vote for a major party, the government will depend on a mixture of minor parties to get their legislation through the Senate. Prime Minister Scott Morrison opened a Pandora’s box during the 2017 Wentworth by-election with his proposal to remove exemptions in the Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) for faith-based schools. Only later was it realised…
“Fair is foul, and foul is fair;hover through the fog and filthy air.” Macbeth, Scene 1, Act 1 China has undergone wrenching changes since paramount leader Deng Xiaoping declared that “to get rich is glorious”. Deng, who succeeded Mao Zedong after the Chairman died in 1976, put China on the road to prosperity. Mao was genuinely surprised when the Great Leap Forward, intended to make China an economic superpower in a decade, mutated into the worst famine in the history of China. It is estimated that at least 45 million people starved to death between 1958 and 1962, Frank Dikötter wrote in Mao’s Great Famine (Bloomsbury, 2010). Mao was an ideologue who believed that people could be transmuted by some form of political alchemy into socialist beings, ignoring both…
It is often said, quite correctly, that Taiwan is one of the most socially liberal societies in Asia, but this ignores the genuine alarm that the rapid advance of the homosexual agenda is causing in the country. For instance, the referendum on Saturday November 24 last confirmed the status quo that, under the Civil Code, marriage is between “a man and a woman”. The family remains the bedrock of Taiwan society; tolerance is not the equivalent of approval. Members of the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance hold up signs showing the number of people — 1,982,100 — who had signed their three referendum proposals in the leadup to the November 24 referendum. Rarely are things so simple in Taiwan. The High Court ruled on May 24, 2017, that the…
Emile Ratelband is a 49-year-old Dutchman trapped in the body of a 69-year-old Dutchman (of the same name). Emil Ratelband: as honest as the day is long: 22 hours. At least, that is what he tells us, the all-believing public. Ratelband says that he feels 20 years younger than he is and that doctors have told him he has the body of a younger man. Indeed, his photo goes a long way to backing up that assertion: he could be a man in his late 50s. Ratelband reckons having a younger age on paper would give him a better chance in the online dating game. His reasoning is perfectly sound: if his age on the dating apps is 49, he is more likely to get a date, but he doesn’t…
It used to be that a disruptive boy could face discipline or be expelled from school for repeatedly putting girls at risk by entering the girls change rooms or toilets. Now, if the Federal Government, Labor and the Greens remove exemptions for faith-based schools from the federal Sex Discrimination Act, principals and teachers may face discrimination charges for refusing to allow a biological boy, who identifies as a girl, access to female safe spaces. This move has come after Prime Minister Scott Morrison said in October that his Government did “not support expulsion of students from religious non-state schools on the basis of their sexuality”. The Greens and Labor upped the ante on Morrison with a Senate bill to remove the exemptions clause covering both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity”…
On October 12, 2018, Patrick J. Byrne, national president of the National Civic Council, spoke at an NCC dinner in Sydney. In that speech, Patrick outlined a strategy by which to renew the energies and courage of supporters to oppose head on the ascendant ideologies that seem to be pushing our society towards dissolution. Where the threats are, there are the centres from which to resist the assaults. The text of his speech follows. Click for a report on the dinner, and the text of the speech on the night of former national ALP leader and now political pundit Mark Latham. We live at a dangerous moment in history. Under threat are our families, our faith and our freedoms. Fifty years after the cultural…
Former national ALP leader and now political pundit Mark Latham addressed an NCC dinner in Sydney on October 12. Mark was fully aware of how unlikely it would have been even in recent times for a past leader of the ALP to address an NCC function. The text of his speech follows. Click for the text of the speech of National Civic Council national president Patrick J. Byrne on the night and a report on the dinner. Reflecting on the troubled times in which we live politically, the challenge to defend our civilisational values, makes me wonder, how many former Labor leaders would have addressed an NCC function? Perhaps the closest you’ve got in recent times is that Bill Hayden has become a Catholic. I…
Why? In the UK, since 2009, there has been an alarming increase in the number of children seeking gender transitioning treatment, indicating a 4000 per cent increase over that time. This has resulted in UK Conservative MP Penny Mordaunt calling for a parliamentary inquiry into the reasons why. Just as in the UK, Australia also has experienced an unprecedented increase in the number of children seeking this treatment in an expanding number of clinics. For example, in Western Australia, the number of children seeking to transition has jumped more than 350 per cent in four years. Perth Children’s Hospital received 121 referrals for children under 18 for its gender diversity service in 2017–18 and currently has 207 patients. In NSW, by April 2017, referrals for…
During the Wentworth by-election campaign, Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced his intention to remove protections for the freedoms of faith-based schools to select students in relation to a student’s sexual orientation, that is, their heterosexual or gay or lesbian sexual orientation. Then, days before the ballot, the Greens with Labor’s support moved to ratchet up pressure on the Government by moving the Discrimination Free Schools Bill 2018 in the Senate. It sought to repeal section 38 of the Sex Discrimination Act, thereby removing protections for faith-based schools in relation to “gender identity” as well as sexual orientation. Therefore, it aimed to include not only gays and lesbians, but also transgenders; not only students but also staff, all of whom are covered in the Sex Discrimination Act. …
The courageous and outspoken defence of free speech at universities by University of Western Australia chancellor and former High Court Chief Justice Robert French (News Weekly, October 6, 2018) may have helped waken a realisation among his peers that, thanks to the thuggery of some leftist students and staff, universities are losing their reputation as bastions of free inquiry and debate. Mr French’s statement came after UWA cancelled a talk by World-famous endocrinologist Dr Quentin Van Meter, citing a high risk of violence if the lecture were allowed to go ahead. In other words, the university caved in to intimidation. Dr Van Meter has argued that gender confusion in children is overwhelmingly a matter of suggestion to them, rather than something they are born with – a…
Gender identity laws and court rulings are being used to separate children from parents More legislation is planned If you can change your sex, can you change your age or race? When Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently tweeted, “we don’t need ‘gender whisperers’ in schools”, he should have been congratulated, not attacked, for alerting parents to how governments are interfering in Australian families. His comment was in regard to NSW teachers being trained to spot potential transgender students in classrooms. Some experts claim this has contributed to a 236 per cent surge in the number of kids wanting to change sex in the past three years. This intrusion follows laws that redefine the human person by their gender…
“China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep; for, when she wakes, she will move the world.” Napoleon Bonaparte NB. China’s Social Credit System has no relation whatsoever, except the coincidental use of the words “social credit”, with the movement in Western countries and the theory of Major C.H. Douglas which argued for governments issuing unlimited credit and for tax to be restricted to tax on land. In recent decades, China has been rapidly modernising. But that is far from akin to Westernising. China is a curious combination of communism and hyper-capitalism, with the Government maintaining strict control of its people while allowing economic liberalisation. The sleeper wakes. On ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent (September 18), viewers had a chilling vision of China’s rapidly developing digital dictatorship, which appears like dystopian North Korea…
In recent decades, China has been rapidly modernising. But that is far from akin to Westernising. China is a curious combination of communism and hyper-capitalism, with the Government maintaining strict control of its people while allowing economic liberalisation. “China is a sleeping giant. Let her sleep, for when she wakes she will move the world.” Napoleon Bonaparte The sleeper wakes. On ABC TV’s Foreign Correspondent (September 18), viewers had a chilling vision of China’s rapidly developing digital dictatorship, which appears like dystopian North Korea on steroids. Over the last…
In today’s world, it is nigh impossible to conduct one’s personal or professional life without resorting to electronic means. E-banking is seamlessly integrated into most businesses; phone-banking apps track exactly how you spend your money, categorising spending into “shopping”, “groceries”, “eating out”, “utilities” and so on, ostensibly to help you budget better. My fiancé found a distant jeweller who refuses to use e-banking, so he had to mail a money order, which – including secure postage – cost him $15 to send a $30 payment for simple repairs. For young people especially, our social lives tend to be conducted simultaneously in person and through social media. We trust Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram and SnapChat with the most intimate details of our lives, in our desire to be connected and heard.…
ON OPS: Lessons and Challenges for the Australian Army since East Timor by Tom Frame and Albert Palazzo (eds) NewSouth Publishing, Sydney Paperback: 344 pages Price: AUD$39.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb In the language of management-speak, the Australian Defence Force (ADF) has created a new paradigm. In a situation where no obvious threat to the Australian mainland existed, the ADF has been involved in a series of operations that had the potential to turn nasty very quickly, such as East Timor and the Solomons – but didn’t. The re-equipping of the ADF to face future challenges has bipartisan support, but one thing must be kept in mind: in a democracy, the armed forces must have public support, both to keep the taxpayer dollars flowing and as a source of…
Over one thousand pro-life campaigners laid out 3300 crosses at the annual Rally for Life in Perth on May 26, each cross representing 50 of the abortions that have occurred in Western Australia since abortion was legalised 20 years ago. That equates to 165,000 aborted children in WA since May 26, 1998. Attendees Isabelle Lindsey and Lucy Crees, both 20, are the emerging young face of the pro-life movement the world over. More than a third of rally attendees were below the age of 30. Both belong to pro-life student group LifeChoice and were at the rally to support women who find themselves struggling with the “nightmare” of unplanned pregnancy. “I was lucky enough to be chosen by my mother, but how many more are like me that didn’t get…
Two hundred years after his birth, the legacy of Karl Marx is a brutal social experiment under communist rule in the East, and in the West a cultural revolution whose effects are still being worked through today. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice. (If you seek his monument, look around.) Karl Marx was born in Trier on the banks of the Moselle River in Germany on May 5, 1818. His Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, written at the height of the Industrial Revolution, inspired the communist takeover of Russia by Vladimir Lenin in 1918, and Mao Zedong’s conquest of China in 1949. Heroic Soviet dissidents like 1970 Nobel laureate for literature Alexander Solzhenitsyn documented the brutality of Joseph Stalin’s great purge, the forced famine in Ukraine and the millions who vanished in…
As the Queensland Government moves to allow men to self-identify as women, 300 angry women have quit the British Labour Party over guaranteeing transgender male-to-females on the party’s All-Women Shortlist. UK Labour’s All-Women Shortlist is the equivalent of the Australian Labor Party’s affirmative action policy to having women preselected in 40 per cent of winnable seats. 300 women quit UK Labour Party angry that men who identify as women are eligible to be included on all-women shortlists for preselection LNP Facebook protest has been viewed 650,000 times and had over 14,000 shares in three weeks The Palaszczuk Government plans to amend the Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages Act to allow a person to self-identify as Male, Female, Indeterminate, Unspecified or Intersex on their birth certificate. A man could identify as…
“Sex” as a classificatory system for human beings (at least) as defined by the religious tradition from Sinai consists of male and female and a category traditionally known as the hermaphrodite and nowadays called “intersex”. What are ultimately determinative are the actual reproductive organs and genitalia. The “intersex” person is one with reproductive organs and genitalia of both sexes. Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen is director of the Institute for Judaism and Civilization, Inc. He is the author of several books, including The Theory and Practice of Universal Ethics: The Noahide Laws, and Homosexuality, Marriage and Society. Rabbi Cowen’s latest book is entitled Contemporary Politics and Social Policy in the Lens of Traditional Faith and Universal Ethics and will be reviewed in a future edition of News Weekly. Rabbi Cowen delivered the following talk…
People should have freedom of choice in the counselling or medical advice or treatment they seek. In relation to same-sex attraction or gender identity or gender transitioning, as with any other medical or health issues, all options should be open to them, including counselling out of same-sex attraction or gender transitioning if they so choose. Decisions around medical treatment should be patient centred. Federal Labor policy is to “amend laws to deal with any psychological treatments to discourage gender questioning,” saying “[c]urrent laws regulating false and misleading conduct in trade or commerce, or professional misconduct in the health professions, are inadequate to deal with perpetrators who can evade health regulation by not being registered, and evade consumer protection laws by claiming to be conducting religious activities.” Labor policy is that…
Men/boys can self-identify as women/girls If you can change your sex, can you change your age, race? In the name of “diversity”, “uniformity” imposed on everyone More rights threatened than under same-sex marriage The Queensland Government of Annastacia Palaszczuk is proposing to change birth certificates to allow people to register as Male, Female, Indeterminate, Unspecified or Intersex. A discussion paper from Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Yvette D’Ath says that Queensland should follow the ACT and South Australia, which have adopted these new forms of birth certificates. The paper fails to point out that strong opposition from feminists saw the Tasmanian Human Rights Commission drop a similar proposal, while the Victorian Upper House voted down transgendering Victorian birth certificates in 2016. When Victorian opposition parliamentarians asked, “if a person can…
Men/boys can self-identify as women/girls If you can change your sex, can you change your age, race? In the name of “diversity”, “uniformity” imposed on everyone More rights threatened than under same-sex marriage The Queensland Government of Annastacia Palaszczuk is proposing to change birth certificates to allow people to register as Male, Female, Indeterminate, Unspecified or Intersex. A discussion paper from Attorney-General and Minister for Justice Yvette D’Ath says that Queensland should follow the ACT and South Australia, which have adopted these new forms of birth certificates. The paper fails to point out that strong opposition from feminists saw the Tasmanian Human Rights Commission drop a similar proposal, while the Victorian Upper House voted down transgendering Victorian birth certificates in 2016. When Victorian opposition parliamentarians asked, “if a person can…
Exceedingly rich white men (and women) who invest in biomedical companies are funding myriad transgender organisations whose agenda will make them gobs of money. Author Jennifer Bilek is an artist, environmental activist, writer, and an engaged citizen. As an environmental activist who was deplatformed from a speaking venue by transactivists, in 2013 I developed curiosity about the power of this group to force this development. A year later, when Time magazine announced a transgender tipping point on its cover, I had already begun to examine the money behind the transgender project. I have watched as all-women’s safe spaces, universities, and sports opened their doors to any man who chose to identify as a woman. Whereas men who identify as transwomen are at the forefront of this project, women who identify as…
Bishop Peter J. Elliott is Auxiliary Bishop for the Southern Region in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne and is Episcopal Vicar for Religious Education. The following is a slightly edited version of the talk he gave to the NCC Annual National Conference in February. Bishop Peter Elliott Behind the war against the Church, from Nero to Kim Jong-un, is the perennial and more complex problem of the relationship between the Church and the state, an unresolved two thousand-year saga of loss and gain. Turning from that vast topic, I want to focus on the experiences of persecuted Catholics, which reveal the methods used by various states to attack, control or even destroy the Church. In several case studies I will share recent memories of my own to help make sense…
Gender dysphoria is a serious mental health issue. By contrast, transgenderism is a belief system that increasingly looks like a cultish religion – a modern-day Gnosticism that denies physical reality in favour of deceived perceptions – being forced on the public by the state. Gnostic adepts have seen through the surfaceof things to the true reality. Disagreement with pro-LGBT policies quickly gets one branded as anti-science. As Jonah Goldberg has pointed out, this is an example of ideology using the language of science to camouflage itself. It turns out, though, that science isn’t much help to transgender advocacy. The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5 notes gender dysphoria desistence rates of 70 to 97 per cent in “natal males” and 50 to 88 per cent in “natal…
Liberal Member for Menzies the Hon Kevin Anrews delivered the following address to the National Civic Council’s Annual Conference on Saturday, February 3, 2018. Mr Andrews is chairman of the Human Rights Sub-committee of the Parliamentary Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade. In December 1948, the international community gathered at the United Nations, adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Confronted by the horrors of World War II and egregious breaches of human rights in many places, world leaders sought to enshrine standards of conduct that respected the inherent dignity and liberty of each human being. Led by the redoubtable Eleanor Roosevelt, the Human Rights Committee of the new organisation had worked for nearly two years to draft the Declaration. Australia was a significant supporter…
If minors can decide to have hormone sex transitioning treatments without Family Court approval, are children also capable of making their own decision to become child brides or child soldiers? In a landmark decision on November 30, 2017, a Full Bench of the Family Court ruled that Court approval was no longer needed for young people with gender dysphoria seeking to undergo hormone treatment to transition to the opposite sex. The case revolved around a young Victorian, born male, but who has sought to transition to be a female. The news was given to the family by Dr Michelle Telfer, head of the gender service at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital. Stage 1 hormonal treatment in early adolescence involves the administration of puberty “blockers” that suppress the hormones responsible for puberty.…
A Northern Territory discussion paper proposes redefining the human person by their fluid gender identity and sexual orientation, while removing the biological definitions of man and woman from the Territory Anti-Discrimination Act. Binary is out of fashion. The discussion paper for “Modernising the Anti-Discrimination Act” (ADA), issued by the Territory Attorney-General’s Department, says that the proposals are based on changes made in 2013 to the federal Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (SDA). The discussion paper says: “Gender is not limited to biological sex assignment; it takes into account appearance, mannerisms and the social identity a person chooses for themselves, including to be something other than male or female. Gender refers to the way a person presents and is recognised within the community. “A person’s gender might include outward social markers, including…
ABBOTT’S RIGHT: The Conservative Tradition from Menzies to Abbott by Damien Freeman Melbourne University Press, Carlton Paperback: 188 pages Price: AUD$27.99 Reviewed by Michael Quinlan Dr Damien Freeman is a visiting scholar at the PM Glynn Institute, Australian Catholic University. He studied classical Hebrew and Aramaic, philosophy, and law at the University of Sydney before completing doctoral studies at Cambridge. He enjoyed an interesting legal career which included being tipstaff to the Hon. Mr Justice K. R. Handley AO and private secretary to Lord Brennan QC. Freeman has written several books and been published in Quadrant, Spectator, Weekend Australian, and The Australian Financial Review. He has also appeared on ABC Radio’s Counterpoint, Weekend Arts, and Between the Lines. In this short book, Freeman considers the nature of the…
In 2013, the federal Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) was radically amended. The Sex Discrimination Amendment (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Intersex Status) Bill 2013 was to give effect to the then Labor government’s commitment to introduce new protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. It also introduced a separate ground of discrimination on the basis of intersex on the reasoning that people who are intersex face many of the same issues that the introduction of the ground of gender identity sought to resolve. “Sexual orientation” was defined as meaning a person’s orientation towards persons of the same sex, persons of a different sex or to persons of the same sex and of a different sex. Attraction to persons of the same sex is obviously homosexual.…
The following is an extract from Patrick J. Byrne’s forthcoming book (Wilkinson Publishing) on transgenderism and the consequences normalising it and writing it into law will have on marriage, education and culture. It will be essential reading as we try to understand what is at stake if we redefine marriage as between “two persons”. At the centre of the debate around the controversial Safe Schools program, various anti-discrimination laws and attempts to redefine marriage is the theory and ideology of transgenderism. A man is a member of the male biological sex, as recognised at birth by his male reproductive anatomy and potential; and a woman is a member of the female biological sex, as recognised by her reproductive anatomy and potential. This binary biological reality (“binary” relates to two opposites)[1]…
The Australian public is being endlessly warned about the danger of bullying, distortions and vilification that may attend the postal vote on redefining marriage. Yet, has it occurred to anyone else that most – if not all – of the bullying, distortions and vilification seem to be coming from the “Yes” campaign? The advertisement from the “No” campaign featuring three women talking, calmly but with obvious concern, about the content of the “Safe Schools” program and how legislating same-sex/transgender “marriage” would entrench these type of programs in schools, drew widespread condemnation and ridicule. Channel Ten, in its weeknightly news program The Project, ran a spoof ad ridiculing the three women, Sydney GP Dr Pansy Lai, mother Cella White and Pastor Heidi McIvor. In the spoof, the claim that “Safe Schools”…
The recent film, Harvested Alive, documents the latest chapter in the dark history of persecution perpetrated by the Chinese Communist Party against its own people. Dr Wang Zhiyuan Dr Wang Zhiyuan, a Chinese doctor who travelled to the United States, set about trying to investigate the use of Falun Gong practitioners as a source of human organs. The film, Harvested Alive, is the result of his 10-year study. He contacted Chinese doctors, judges, legislators, military officials, government officials, the media, and hospital websites. His research revealed a terrible truth: China’s hospitals, judiciary, and military work together, under the authority of the Chinese Communist Party, to execute thousands of Falun Gong practitioners for their organs. In the years after Mao Zedong led the Chinese Communist Party to seize power in Beijing…
PAPER GENDERS: Pulling the mask off the Transgender Phenomenon Make Waves Publishing, Carlsbad, California Paperback: 130 pages Price: AUD $29.95 GENDER, LIES AND SUICIDE: A Whistleblower Speaks Out Make Waves Publishing, Carlsbad, California Paperback: 152 pages Price: AUD $29.95 by Walt Heyer Reviewed by Peter Kelleher Availability Walt Heyer’s books are only available through his website, www.sexchangeregret.comNB Above prices do not include P&P from the U.S. In the September 24, 2016, edition of News Weekly, I reviewed the novelised biography of Walt Heyer. In Kid Dakota, Heyer recounted the story of his life from abused toddler to troubled cross-dressing adult to transgender female and back again to the true Walt Heyer. In the two books up for review here, Heyer takes on what he characterises as the…
An Australian mother’s video clip exposing what the “Safe Schools” program is teaching her children has gone viral, while in Britain, schools are being threatened with closure if they don’t teach about gender reassignment. A Melbourne mother’s video has been viewed over 3.5 million times on Facebook and shared over 54,000 times, revealing what her son and daughter had told her after coming home from a “Safe Schools” class, including how to use sex toys, anal sex positions, how to masturbate, and that sexually transmitted infections are no big deal. The school welfare officer, when questioned why a teacher had shown Year 8 students a dildo, told the Melbourne mother: “You know they’re all having sex from 12 now … it’s a much safer option that they use these devices…
Recently, Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) issued three scoping documents that form a proposal to develop a whole of school approach to “transgender” sex education for its schools. EREA governs 52 Catholic schools and has 34 associate schools across Australia. EREA has released three documents, Live Life to the Full: Resources for Principals, School Leaders & Teachers, the Safe and Inclusive Learning Communities report by Peter Norden and Live Life to the Full: EREA Safe and Inclusive Learning Communities Statement (SILC). The SILC statement says that “‘transgender’ relates to a person whose sense of personal identity and gender does not correspond with their birth sex. A person who is transgender may or may not decide to ‘transition,’ which requires medical and psychological support.”[1] Broadly, “transgender”…
Childhood gender dysphoria is reaching epidemic proportions as hundreds of children present every year to special clinics in our children’s hospitals. But is the “disease” real, and is medical intervention helpful? Proponents attest that 1 per cent of children suffer from contradiction between their physical and imagined sex. The so-called Safe Schools program even claims that one in every 25 children is afflicted. This contrasts with my straw poll of 28 paediatricians with a cumulative experience of 931 years The 28 specialists could recall in their experience only 12 children having suffered from confusion over gender: 10 also suffered from severe mental disturbance, and two had been the victims of prolonged sexual abuse. I think the current epidemic is a behavioural phenomenon fanned by a sensationalist media and given direction…
For the second year running, before the meeting of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW 61. See the report in News Weekly, May 6, 2017), a Youth Forum was held. This year about 750 young people (mostly young women) gathered on March 11–12 at the United Nations in New York to produce the Youth Declaration. The Youth Declaration is subtitled “Gender-just implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals: Young women’s right to economic empowerment and participation in leadership and decision-making”. The declaration is presented to the CSW Conference, prior to its completion, with the aim of influencing the Agreed Conclusions. The United Nations considers children of the age of 10 old enough and mature enough to attend these sessions. Wearing “We are not labels; we are powerful girls” T-shirts,…
Is the above headline really appropriate, or does it suggest a darker background to the light and airy stories that the media feeds to us on this issue. The darker background, which should be the foreground, is the subject of Walt Heyer’s activity as a former transsexual male-to-female who has de-transitioned back to being male. Meanwhile, transgenderism is again in the news with two headline-grabbing stories. Caitlyn (ne Bruce) Jenner has released a book on the story of her transition to female; and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning has been released from jail after former U.S. President Barack Obama granted the soldier convicted of espionage a pardon. In a television interview to spruik her book, Jenner referred to two issues that revealed much more than she intended. As Daily Mail Australia…
The pursuit of rainbow politics is proving to be a thorn in the side for Target stores in America. Since April 19, 2016, when the chain announced it would allow transgender customers and employees to use change rooms and bathrooms corresponding to their gender identity rather than to their biological sex,[1] its share price has plummeted from around $US84 to $US55 today. The announcement triggered several petitions by the American Family Association and others signed by 1.5 million people saying they would boycott Target until the mixed-sex change-room policy was reversed. Target has recently fired five top executives and has slashed chief executive Brian Cornell’s pay by a third.[2] Target’s decision to adopt transgender bathroom facilities could be described as a case of “virtue signalling” in response to North Carolina’s…
Once the overt sectarian conflicts between Catholics and Protestants largely petered out in Australia in the 1970s, we looked to be headed towards an Australia that was a model of religious tolerance. But in recent times the social stability engendered by religious tolerance is again imperilled as the law increasingly conflicts with religion and conscience in Australia. So, what is happening and why? Australia has deep historical Christian roots and a substantial majority of Australians continue to identify with Christian religious traditions. While that majority has declined (from 96 per cent in 1911 to 61 per cent in 2011) and we are yet to see the results of the 2016 census, the Christian faith traditions continue to be dominant in Australia. Those who act as though Australia is “post Christian”…
On Easter Sunday ABC News reported that the NSW Coalition Government was replacing the controversial Safe Schools program (SSP) with a new broader anti-bullying strategy when federal funding runs out in June. Education Minister Rob Stokes made clear that NSW public schools would continue to provide support for LGBT students: schools will be a safe place for all students and that bullying for any reason, because of someone being overweight, gay or because of the colour of their skin, will not be tolerated. On the following Tuesday, Tasmanian Education and Training Minister Jeremy Rockliff announced that the Tasmanian Coalition Government had no plans to take over the funding of the SSP when federal funding ceased, given its $3 million investment in its own Combatting Bullying budgetinitiative. In contrast, in the…
On March 21, 2017, the Supreme Court of Victoria handed down a decision that related to protesting outside a fertility clinic. This decision of the Supreme Court of Victoria arose from the appeal of a previous judgement in the County Court of Victoria in November 2015. In a nutshell, the Court argued that images of dead unborn babies cannot be displayed in public because they are too disgusting and “may be so distressing as to be potentially harmful”. The case upheld the criminal conviction of Michelle Fraser, a pro-life woman, for displaying an image of a dead foetus in public at a peaceful demonstration against abortion in 2013. The effect of the decision is that showing any image of a dead foetus is obscene and therefore its display is a…
THE DEMON IN DEMOCRACY: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies by Ryszard Legutko Encounter Books, NY Hardcover: 200 pages Price: AUD $34.99 Reviewed by Brian Coman In 1989, Francis Fukuyama published his famous essay entitled The End of History. Here he argued that, with the break-up of the Soviet Empire (then just beginning), the political system of liberal democracy would ultimately triumph over all others. Even those who disagreed with his thesis – and there were many – rarely disagreed with the notion that such an outcome would be highly desirable. Yet, a little over a decade earlier, one lone voice did sound a warning against liberal-democratic triumphalism. That lone voice was Alexandr Solzhenitsyn and he announced his misgivings in his famous Harvard Address: Two hundred or even fifty years…
Malcolm Turnbull’s bold decision to reform the Racial Discrimination Act to make it less subjective and more robust and effective has been labeled as another burden he will have to take to the next election that will deny him votes. Bill Shorten’s Labor thinks it is on a winner on section 18C of the act, believing that it has won the moral high ground on racism and the political high ground with the ethnic communities, who he thinks will side with it over the Coalition. Their optimism on this front is premature and misguided. There ain’t nobody else here; you must be talkin’ to me … In simple terms the Coalition, no doubt spurred by the sudden death of prominent controversial cartoonist Bill Leak, decided to bite the bullet and…
Late last year the West Australian Parliament passed laws regarding domestic violence which pose an insidious threat to fundamental rights of citizens in that state. Previous laws ensured that if a person alleged that violence had occurred she would usually be issued with a restraining order without any evidence to support that claim. The new laws take this even further. Under the new legislation it is enough for a person simply to claim that she fears violence may occur in order to be issued with a restraining order. “Powerful protection for the truly vulnerable? Or an incredibly dangerous weapon in the hands of the streetwise, vexatious and manipulative litigant?”, asks rhetorically Simon Creek, a well-known divorce lawyer in Western Australia. As a divorce lawyer for many years, Simon has been…
After a year-long rainbow alliance campaign for a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, the Federal Government’s policy is still for a plebiscite, while Labor has shifted onto other issues. Despite the Senate blocking a people’s vote on the issue late last year, Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed that a plebiscite remains his Government’s policy. Mr Turnbull recently told the 60 Minutes program: “We took the plebiscite proposal to the election, that is our policy. We are calling on Bill Shorten to rethink his position and if he supports the plebiscite then it will pass through the Senate and it [the plebiscite] will be held.” Around the same time, Tony Abbott warned against breaking the Coalition’s election promise of a plebiscite, telling Fairfax Media: “Malcolm Turnbull made a clear election commitment that…
The number of autistic kids is skyrocketing. The number of transgender kids is skyrocketing. Is there a link? Yes, said a controversial Canadian expert on transgender issues on a BBC documentary in January. Kenneth Zucker is a distinguished figure in the field of the psychology of sexual behaviour. He is the editor of the Archives of Sexual Behaviour and a professor at the University of Toronto. In 2015 he was summarily dismissed as head of the Gender Identity Service at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) over his views on whether homosexual and transgender identities are fixed and immutable. If a child says he is a dog,do you go out and buy dog food? In the BBC feature he argues that most children with gender dysphoria eventually overcome…
As part of its response to the recommendations of Betrayal of Trust, the report of the Parliamentary Inquiry into the Handling of Child Abuse by Religious and other Non-Government Organisations, the Victorian Government has introduced mandatory Child Safe Standards for all institutions, organisations, groups, and clubs that provide services for children. Schools obviously have to be the largest of those providers. Three new criminal offences were introduced by the former Coalition government to improve responses to child sexual abuse: “Failure to disclose” (Crimes Act, section 327), which makes it an offence for any adult who holds a reasonable belief that a sexual offence has been committed by an adult against a child not to report that belief to police. “Failure to protect” (Crimes Act, section 49C), which applies to people…
The Victorian Liberal State Council has unanimously voted to axe the extreme Safe Schools program if they win the next state election in 2018. At a packed State Council in Ballarat, on Saturday November 19, Opposition Leader Matthew Guy announced that the Liberals would get rid of the Safe Schools program in Victorian schools if the Coalition wins the 2018 election. This was endorsed by the first motion: “That this State Council calls upon the Victorian Parliamentary Liberal Party to seek to withdraw (repeal) the Andrews’ Labor Government’s Safe Schools (LGBTIQ) anti-bullying program, in its entirety, and as a matter of urgency.” It was noted that, in its current form, the Safe Schools (LGBTI) anti-bullying program as implemented in Victorian schools by the Andrews’ Labor Government is an extremist sex-education…
Many years ago, British neurologist Oliver Sacks, a man with a flair for subtle observations and the clear prose to describe them, wrote a book about strange cases of mental confusion he had encountered. Its title seizes your attention instantly: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. The title was no joke, nor was the man in question blind. His eyes registered the colours and contours of his wife, but his mind had lost the capacity to interpret the messages correctly. The poor woman had to endure having her husband grasp her head with both hands as if to lift her and place her atop his head. Today, however, Dr Sacks’ title might not pass muster before the captains of the sexual and linguistic guard. Let me grasp their preferred title…
In the first week of Federal Parliament, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten introduced his own bill for a federal parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, to defeat the Government’s promised plebiscite, which would engage the entire adult population. The Shorten bill, if adopted by Parliament, would amend the Marriage Act, “to allow couples to marry, and to have their marriages recognised, regardless of sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.” The Shorten bill therefore goes far beyond an attempt to assist homosexual and lesbian couples to marry: it is specifically aimed at legalising intersex and transgender marriages. No wonder the detail of what he is proposing has been so completely hidden! Shorten digs in. And no wonder he does not want the people of Australia to vote on this proposition, instead…
THE GLOBAL SEXUAL REVOLUTION by Gabriele Kuby Life Site, Kettering, Ohio Paperback: 283 pages Price: AUD$51.75 Reviewed by John Young A new dictatorship is rapidly spreading, particularly in the Western world. If successful, it will destroy not only Christian civilisation but all civilisation. This book examines that threat. It is essentially a sexual revolution, promoting as good what has been traditionally seen as evil. It denies that marriage should be seen as the union of one man and one woman for life, with the biological end of procreation. Instead, any number of deviant sexual activities are promoted. This work is a penetrating analysis of the situation, including a study of the causes underlying the phenomenon. The original is in German, and written by Gabriele Kuby, a sociologist…
1966: The Year the Decade Exploded by Jon Savage Faber & Faber, London Hardcover: 620 pages Price: AUD$49.99 Reviewed by Jeffry Babb Exactly 50 years on, what can we say about 1966? The so-called “Swinging Sixties” were a time of almost unimaginable prosperity, spread uniformly across the Western world. Economists would argue that we are far more prosperous now, but many people have been left behind by economic growth, trying to make ends meet on contract and part-time work, enough to make them “employed” in the statistician’s eyes. Prosperity in the Sixties was uniform. Women were making their presence felt. The West was climbing out of a pit of wartime deprivation. The ventures by the Chifley and Attlee governments to impose wartime “state socialism” austerity on their…
There is barely any example of gender-identity politics starker, or more reckless, than Rodney Croome’s use of LGBTI youth in his campaign to redefine marriage. An article published by the veteran gay-rights campaigner in The Age on Tuesday (August 23), argued that the marriage plebiscite should be cancelled because apparently it would inevitably lead to youth suicide: “If a plebiscite occurs, and when the first young gay person dies at their own hand, I have to be able to look myself in the mirror and know I did everything I could to stop it.”[1] And later in the article: “I also urge [senators] to consider how they will feel when the first gay teen dies because of the hate they voted to unleash.” Not if but when! This is emotional…
The announcement that the Olympics will accept transgender athletes is set to raise a host of issues, particularly in contact sports, including the Australian Football League (AFL). But first the Olympics. Since 2004 male-to-female transgender athletes have been allowed in the Olympics after surgery and two years of hormone therapy. But they will be allowed in the Rio Olympics without surgery, as long as their testosterone levels have been below male levels for a year. The advantage male-to-female transgender men have over women in sport is a hotly debated issue, particularly in contact sports. In 2014, male-to-female transgender, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter Fallon Fox (then aged 39) overpowered female opponent Tamikka Brents in three minutes. The fight was brutal. Brents suffered potentially career-ending injuries including…
The British Conservative Government under mock-Tory David Cameron is either actively promoting or supinely condoning transsexualism in schools and prisons, with concepts of clear differentiation between the sexes being labeled as bigotry. Prisons and schools get the same treatment. The mind boggles at what would happen under a Labour Government – but perhaps some of the working-class, cloth-capped miner types who comprise its traditional support-base would object. Teachers in the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA) are being advised to avoid use of the word “girls”, to cater for transsexual pupils, despite the fact that “transsexuals” are a minuscule minority of the population and probably non-existent in many schools. At assemblies, staff are encouraged to say “pupils” or “students” instead of “girls” because of hypothetical children who are “posing questions around their…
Before the year 2000, no U.S. state recognised same-sex marriage. By 2015, it was legal throughout the U.S. and most of Western Europe. Before 2015 most Americans knew nothing about transgender issues. Within a year these issues were on the front pages of newspapers every day. The pace of change in the sexual revolution is not just rapid. It’s accelerating around the world. Why? Not reason but marketing Although I’m a scholar familiar with the battles over “what the science says,” I’m convinced the credit here belongs to marketing. Social conservatives have been outmanned and outgunned, but perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in messaging about marriage. Now the messaging has shifted directions a few degrees. Content counts for nothing: the frame is all. Why do conservatives continue to be so…
We have seen enough of the results of the 50-year assault on marriage to be sure that certain behavioural patterns, though “expressed in custom and reinforced by ritual”, are hard-wired and are for our good: that is, marriage works, especially for children. Lucy Sullivan writes. Part Two of two parts Marriage, family, generations are social patterns analogous to fixed action patterns found among lower species. Some may be convinced by the representation of hurt caused by the exclusion from marriage, but it comes too hard on the heels of the pre-AIDS modus operandi to be credible (and homosexual committed couples did quite well without the bit of paper, as do many hetero committed couples today). They need the refusal of marriage to maintain their passion/mission/outrage, and if it is ceded to them, they will…
The decision of the Australia Council – the Australian Government’s autonomous arts funding body – to refuse funding for the literary pages (poetry, short stories, essays and book reviews) of liberal-conservative magazine Quadrant is probably the most disgraceful and indefensible in the history of Australian arts administration. Who’ll bid five bob for this extremely rare, in fact, unique Autumn 2016 edition of Overland? It is without a fig leaf of pretence at objectivity. Quadrant editor-in-chief Keith Windschuttle has called it “a political decision designed to devalue our reputation and demonstrate that the left remains in control of the arts.” It is an unusually blatant demonstration of the Gramscian tactic of capturing institutions for the left. There is an argument that a conservative magazine opposed to socialist statism should not accept government…
Part One in this series of articles examined how queer theory is predicated on the notion of the child as agent, capable of making its own decisions. Part Two of these articles examines other controversial aspects of the theory. Patrick J. Byrne writes. Another controversial aspect of queer theory is transgendering – not just cross-dressing, but medical gender transition. Particularly controversial is the idea that the child as agent can choose to transition gender – to male, female or something else. An example is the Safe Schools program resource, Guide to Supporting a Student to Affirm or Transition Gender Identity at School,[1] which advises schools how to develop a plan to manage a student’s gender transition, even without parental consent – “It may be possible to consider a student…
Further to what we saw in the last edition (News Weekly, May 7, 2016), research is also uncovering fascinating information that is counterintuitive to the 21st-century mind. Science shows the differences start at the top and go all the way down. Given that cultures are different and that male and female differences are demonstrated to varying degrees in different cultures, where would you imagine gender differences between male and female to be most pronounced? Would that be in traditional, developing cultures, where men and women have to depend on each other for daily survival, where today’s food is collected, prepared, cooked, and consumed today? Or in modern cultures that are more technologically, economically and politically advanced, where men and women have the resources and cultural freedoms to become and do…
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 program: Resources include OMG im queer and OMG my friends queer>; These texts link to major queer sites with countless resources on the issue; Children are encouraged to adopt a…
I am Cathy Ruse, with the Family Research Council. I’m a Catholic Christian, and that means it’s impossible for me to believe that marriage is anything other than the union of a man and a woman. No law and no judge will ever make me change that belief. Cathy Ruse I’m a mother, and as a mother I know that no man can be a mother, just as I could never be a father. And children need both. All mothers know this. Single mothers know it best of all. But elites in the media and in academia laugh at this proposition. They scoff at it. They say everyone knows it doesn’t matter whether children are raised in same-sex households or opposite-sex households. It’s all the same. And if you disagree…
There is no stopping the cultural left’s political correctness (PC) movement. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination wants to ban one of the Netherland’s long-cherished children’s characters, Black Pete. Tintin: imperialist. Black Pete, a figure with a black face and a gold earing, accompanies St Nicholas at Christmas time handing out treats to grateful children. Apparently, the danger is that people of colour will be offended because of the negative stereotype portrayed associated with slavery. Children’s books, songs and even fairytales are also falling victim to the PC movement. Last year a Victorian primary school changed the lyrics to Kookaburra Sits on the Old Gum Tree because the line “Gay your life must be” was in danger of upsetting the LGBTIQ thought-police. Little Black Sambo has…
Justice Anthony Kennedy’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges is anchored in the liberty to “define and express” one’s identity. But this view of man is not as exalted as it seems. According to Kennedy, self-defined man, if he’s unmarried, remains tragically lonely and, without state recognition, might even doubt his own dignity. Conjured as it was from Justice Kennedy’s imagination, the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v Hodges has little to teach us about the constitution. It does, however, afford us keen insights into the liberal worldview. In the opinion, it is less Anthony Kennedy the U.S. Supreme Court Justice than Anthony Kennedy the aspiring liberal political theorist who speaks. Woven throughout his musings on the dynamic synergies between the various clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment is the central premise…
Forty years ago, the Australian Parliament carried by the narrowest margin a law which fundamentally changed the nature of marriage in Australia. The Family Law Act was deeply divisive at the time because it fundamentally changed the nature of marriage from one which was intended to last for life, to one which could be terminated by either party on two years’ notice. There have been several subsequent inquiries into this act, but none has considered reversing the central purpose of the act; which was to make divorce easy and inevitable. The social consequences of this legislation continue to do untold damage, not only to women and children – usually the innocent victims of this law – but more broadly to society, because it has weakened one of its key institutions.…
Parents have the natural right to be with their own children, unless they are guilty of some egregious act…. Stealing children from their own parents has historically been considered one of the most inhuman acts of tyrannical dictators…. Slave owners sold the children of their own slaves to other men. Today we are appalled by knowledge of such inhumanity. — Bai Macfarlane, Mary’s Advocates What would you do if I came along in the street and took your children from you? You would do everything physically in your power to defend your children. You would probably injure me and maybe even kill me to protect your own flesh and blood. And yet fathers are somehow supposed to walk away.— Matt O’Connor, Fathers For Justice Dr Stephen Baskerville The most…
American family activist and history professor, Dr Allan Carlson, delivered the following paper at the Moscow Demographic Summit: Family and the Future of Humankind, held during June 29-30, 2011, at the Russian State Social University. It was originally published in the American online journal www.FrontPorchRepublic.com. Dr Allan Carlson One of the lives claimed in the Gulag of the 1930s was that of Alexander Chayanov. An agricultural economist of unusual insight, Chayanov did most of his work here in Moscow and was well on his way to constructing a compelling theory of what he called the “natural family economy”. Alas, his intellectual project was cut short by imprisonment and eventual death. All the same, he left behind a body of work that — I argue — still illuminates the nature of…
INVENTING THE INDIVIDUAL: The Origins of Western Liberalism by Larry Siedentop (UK: Allen Lane / Penguin) Hardcover: 448 pages ISBN: 9780713996449 Price: AUD$39.95 Reviewed by Bill James There are some allegedly self-evident things which modern Westerners take for granted themselves, and assume have always been taken for granted by everyone else. These include individualism, in both its psychological and socio-political senses, and its corollary, human volition (Larry Siedentop provocatively asserts that “Augustine … invented the idea of the will”). Thinkers who realise that the concept of individualism is not as timeless as the alternation of night and day, usually trace it back to the Enlightenment, the Reformation or, at the earliest, the Renaissance. Eighteenth-century proponents of liberalism sometimes imagined that they were restoring a freedom and secularism…
There is at least a prima facie case that the ALP, as a political collective, is mad. Despite the left-wing mainstream media’s more manic utterances, the controversial WA Labor Senator-elect Joe Bullock is neither an arch conservative nor a dinosaur. He is a traditionalist with mainstream views and a lifetime of service to Australia’s largest trade union, the SDA, known as the Shop Assistants Union. The anti-Bullock furore, which erupted a week before the April 5 re-run of WA’s Senate election, bordered on the hysterical. During a single week one journalist from The Australian devoted no fewer than five articles to reporting on the SDA secretary. The catalyst for the attack on Mr Bullock was the recent publicity given to a speech he delivered last November on faith and politics…
Most attention on the make-up of the first Abbott ministry dwelt on the “surprise” lack of women in the Cabinet, suggesting that the new government’s honeymoon period will be both extremely short-lived and that it will not be getting any breaks from the media during its first term. Anything that does not sit well with the left-wing commentariat, be it backsliding on climate change, euthanasia or “marriage equality”, will be attacked at every turn. Various commentators rejoiced over the fall and subsequent withdrawal of outspoken Liberal Sophie Mirabella from what would have been a certain Cabinet post as she faced defeat as the member for Indi. Yet the same commentators raised a ruckus when there was just one woman — Julie Bishop — appointed to the Abbott Cabinet. The new…
The cult of the colossal means kowtowing before the merely “big” — which is thus adequately legitimised as the better and more valuable. It means contempt for what is outwardly small but inwardly great; it is the cult of power and unity, the predilection for the superlative in all spheres of cultural life, yes, even in language. Wilhelm Röpke (1899-1966) It is only since Napoleon’s time that the adjective “great” or “grand” begins to make its telling appearance in expressions such as “Grand Army”, “Grand Dukes”, “Great General Staff”, “Great Powers”, and begins to demand from men the proper respect; and Europe is actually just as much intoxicated as America by expressions such as “unique”, “the world’s biggest”, “the greatest of all times”, “unprecedented”. To this style of the time…
Rallies were held across Australia and around the world recently to mark the 14th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners by the Chinese regime. Peter Westmore delivered the following speech at a rally held in Melbourne’s City Square on July 20. China is a country whose civilisation goes back thousands of years. I have had occasion to visit China briefly, and have found people in China to be polite, friendly, hard-working and extremely interested in what is happening in other parts of the world. The same can be said of the many Chinese people who have come to live in Australia. It is a delight to me that you have come to live here, to enrich our country by your gifts and by your presence here. Yet the…
THE CONSERVATIVE FOUNDATIONS OF THE LIBERAL ORDER: Defending Democracy against Its Modern Enemies and Immoderate Friends by Daniel J. Mahoney (Wilmington, Delaware: ISI Books) Hardcover: 240 pages ISBN: 9781935191001 RRP: AUD$53.90 Reviewed by Trevor Shelley In The Spirit of Liberalism (1978), Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr, professor of government at Harvard University, distinguished between “modern conservatism that accompanies liberalism” and “classical conservatism that preceded liberalism”. Mansfield told us, “modern conservatism was born in rebellion against liberalism”. However, this rebellious spirit has been diminished — modern conservatism has grown rather comfortable in the position of “liberalism’s weak sister, nagging at the vices of its elder brother and at the same time absorbing fraternal hostility and serving as the butt of funny jokes”. This sibling bond and rivalry recalls just how…
At the time of writing, the 94-year-old former President of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, lay critically ill in hospital, forcing South Africans to contemplate life without the man who changed their country forever. Born in 1918 to the family of minor African royalty in a village in Cape Province, Mandela was a beneficiary of efforts by Methodist missionaries to provide education for young Africans. He received both primary and secondary education through the Methodists, and eventually gained entry to the University of Fort Hare, one of the oldest universities in southern Africa, and the first to be open to non-white students. The university became the place where many of the elite in post-independence African states received higher education. Mandela did not graduate, having been suspended for leading a student boycott.…
Any doubts about the intolerance and political clout of the militant homosexual lobby were dispelled at a book launch held at Western Australia’s Parliament, in Perth, on June 20. Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen. Guests were there to hear a talk by Rabbi Dr Shimon Cowen (son of a former Australian Governor-General, the late Sir Zelman Cowen) on his recently published book, Politics and Universal Ethics. Dr Cowen is also director of the Melbourne-based Institute for Judaism and Civilization, which he founded in 1998. However, a functionary from WA’s Department of Multicultural Affairs, who was also present, declared that the book launch could not proceed because the author was “too radical”, according to Liberal state MP, Peter Abetz, who was scheduled to introduce the rabbi. Apparently, Dr Cowen was deemed unfit…
Marilyn Lake’s positions and awards Tasmanian-born Professor Marilyn Lake holds a personal chair in the school of history at Melbourne’s La Trobe University, where she was appointed founding director of women’s studies in 1988. She has also held a number of visiting professorial fellowships, including at Stockholm University, the University of Sydney, the University of Western Australia and the Australian National University. Professor Lake was awarded an Australian Research Council (ARC) professorial research fellowship in 2004 and an Australian Prime Minister’s Centre Research Fellowship in 2007. She has been awarded a second ARC professorial research fellowship that began in 2011 to investigate the international history of Australian democracy. She has published 13 books and numerous articles and book chapters in Australian and international publications. Recent books include What’s Wrong with…
No-one leaves this butcher’s shop alive; that’s why no-one talks about it. Nobody knows how many of China’s Falun Gong practitioners have been subject to “involuntary organ-harvesting”. This antiseptic term describes the practice of cutting up victims while they are still alive for their vital organs, which are often transplanted on demand into wealthy people from outside China. The group that is most subject to these horrors are Falun Gong practitioners. Falun Gong is a mixture of traditional Chinese beliefs drawn from Buddhism and Taoism, which are likely to be incomprehensible to the average Westerner. These beliefs are supplemented by a set of exercises known as qi gong. You can see elderly people practising similar exercises in almost any park in China soon after dawn. Practitioners believe these exercises can…
On the initiative of Senator John Madigan (DLP, Victoria), the Senate last month adopted a resolution which calls on the Australian government to “support the UN and Council of Europe initiatives to oppose the practice of organ-harvesting”, a practice which has been common in China since the persecution of Falun Gong practitioners began in 1999. Australian governments have been largely silent on this issue, apparently fearful of offending the Chinese communist regime. Falun Gong is a Chinese spiritual movement which includes meditational practices and the cultivation of virtue through its central tenets of truthfulness, forbearance and compassion. Shortly before the Senate motion was carried, Canadian human rights lawyer David Kilgour spoke to parliamentarians in Canberra, outlining international initiatives to end the killing of Falun Gong practitioners in China for their…
Western Australian law academic Augusto Zimmermann assesses the destructive impact of radical feminism on Western society, in the following edited extract from a chapter of his widely acclaimed new book, Western Legal Theory: Theory, Concepts and Perspectives (Sydney: LexisNexis Butterworths, 2013). Although the term “feminism” was not coined until the late 19th century, the belief that women should have the same rights and responsibilities as men dates back to an earlier period in history. Initiated in the 19th century, classic feminism demanded equal political rights as well as equal laws regarding property, marriage and divorce, and that child custody be made equitable. This first-wave feminism basically insisted on the fair treatment of everyone without discrimination. It may be argued that most Western women still subscribe philosophically to this “first-wave” kind…
Victorian DLP Senator John Madigan is trying to ensure the issue of abortion is not overlooked by political parties ahead of this year’s federal election. He is introducing a bill to ban Medicare funding for abortions used for sex selection. He explained to The Australian newspaper: “The bill aims to stop Medicare funding for abortions procured on the basis of gender selection. “We might not like to think that this happens in Australia, but parents can and do pick the gender of their child to fit their lifestyle, and do abort a child of the unwanted sex. “This is horrifying. Children are being viewed as accessories, which is simply not right. You don’t paint the nursery, then pick the sex of the child.” (The Australian, February 27, 2013). On February…
An American computer security company, Mandiant, which was targeted by Chinese cyber-spies, turned the tables on the hackers, infiltrating their systems and documenting the massive degree of computer espionage undertaken by the Chinese regime, through the government’s military force, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Mandiant has been tracking Chinese computer espionage since 2004, on behalf of both corporate clients and US government departments. It has documented the extent of computer hacking, from one key PLA site in Shanghai, in a special report, available on its website, www.mandiant.com. Kevin Mandia The Chinese attack on Mandiant came through an apparently innocuous email message, purporting to come from the CEO of Mandiant, Kevin Mandia, to fellow staff. It read: “Kevin Mandia “Subject: Internal Discussion on the Press Release “Hello, Shall we schedule a…
Julia Gillard lit a match to ignite a “gender war” against the leader of the Opposition during a fiery speech in parliament that is now being celebrated in feminist circles as a seminal moment in the advancement of women. For feminist commentators, particularly those geographically a very long way from the reality of Australian politics, Ms Gillard was holding aloft a torch for women victims of sexism and misogyny everywhere. As Susan Mitchell, South Australian author of Tony Abbott: A Man’s Man (Melbourne: Scribe Publications, 2011), said of Gillard’s speech: “Whatever happens, Gillard’s words will never be erased. They are proof that words can change the world.” But while the video of Gillard’s speech went “viral” as a result of some savvy media work inside the Prime Minister’s media office,…
Pro-lifers, and even those who are not particularly pro-life, have been repulsed by the selective abortion of female babies in the womb, and the killing or abandonment of baby girls after birth in countries such as India and China. These societies traditionally have a strong preference for male children. However, with the permissive abortion laws in these countries — or, worse still, compulsory abortion in China after the first child — there has been little anyone could do about it. Radical feminists, usually vocal on issues of perceived discrimination, have been notably silent. How could they protest the selective culling of girls when the feminist mantra is “taxpayer-funded abortion on demand at any time up to birth for any reason”? Two doctors, originally from India, now Australian citizens, decided to…
Beware the purifiers, those fanatics who are committed absolutely to the purification of the world, at whatever human cost. Such is the urgent message of scholars and commentators who have been watching carefully the resurgence of a massively destructive but very seductive extremist ideology — revolutionary millennarianism. It is a quasi-religious creed that seeks an earthly paradise, a new truth, a new humanity, and a new civilisation that is miraculously pure, militantly equal, free from want or greed, and now, ecologically sustainable. This utopian ideology has deep historical roots, and has driven most revolutionary and terrorist movements since the French Revolution. The groundbreaking studies of this phenomenon were The Pursuit of the Millennium, by Norman Cohn (1970), and The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy, by J.L. Talmon (1970), while the approaching…
GREEN PHILOSOPHY: How to Think Seriously About the Planet by Roger Scruton (London: Atlantic Books) Hardcover: 464 pages ISBN: 9781848870765 RRP: AUD$65.95 Reviewed by Brian J. Coman These days, it is usual for us to associate the term “green philosophy” with “green” politics. Furthermore, we are accustomed to those strict demarcations whereby conservative ideas and policies are ipso facto condemned as “anti-environment”, whereas socialist/ progressive ideas offer the only real hope for the future of the planet. What a welcome surprise, then, to find a well-presented case for a green philosophy which does not involve the usual sort of rhetoric we are accustomed to from the Greens or left-leaning social engineers. Such a book is Roger Scruton’s Green Philosophy: How to Think Seriously About the Planet. It is…
A major battle for freedom of speech has broken out at the University of Sydney. In the past few months, a group of students have worked to found LifeChoice Sydney, a non-partisan and non-sectarian pro-life club. The aims of the club are: 1) to promote the dignity of human life from conception to natural death; 2) to promote discussion around the issues of euthanasia and abortion; and 3) to promote awareness of alternatives to euthanasia and abortion. Speaking of the founding of the club, the president Rebecca Elias said: “LifeChoice aims to promote the dignity of human life in an open, honest and non-confrontational manner. The fact that we are pro-life means that we respect all human life and, as a club, we aim to conduct our discussions in a…
The Crusades are “topical and highly sensitive, given the recent tensions in the Middle East — and the world at large (e.g., the terrorist threat posed by some fundamentalist religious and political factions)”.[1] This is a warning issued to Year 8 Humanities/ Studies of Society and Environment (SOSE) teachers by John Wiley & Sons Australia Ltd, trading as Jacaranda Press. However, Jacaranda’s history of the Middle Ages, Humanities Alive,[2] is biased and highly insensitive. Jacaranda misleads children. Its textbook says: “Between 1096 and 1291, eight wars, called the Crusades, were fought between Christians from Europe and Arab Muslims in an area we know today as part of the Middle East. Although, in the end, the Crusaders ended up achieving little in battle, they brought many new ideas back to Europe….…
A recent article in the English Journal of Medical Ethics has argued that new-born babies may be killed because they are “morally irrelevant”, are not “actual persons” and have no “moral right to life”, London’s Daily Telegraph reported on February 29. The co-authors start from the position of Professor Peter Singer that there is no such thing as a human essence with inalienable rights. A new-born baby to them is just like a foetus: “both lack those properties that justify the attribution of a right to life to an individual”. As a result the authors argue that it is “not possible to damage a newborn by preventing her from developing the potentiality to become a person in the morally relevant sense”. This means that a defenceless baby can be disposed…
FROM NEW LEFT TO FACTIONAL LEFT: Fifty Years of Student Activism at Sydney University by Alan Barcan (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing) Paperback: 250 pages ISBN: 9781921509889 RRP: $44.00 Reviewed by Mervyn F. Bendle In the mid-1970s the New Left in Australia began its “long march through the institutions” to seize power in the political and cultural spheres and, through its destructive influence, produce the crisis of governance that now blights our nation’s political system. As Barcan points out (p.209), this strategy was originally articulated in 1967 by the German New Left theorist, Rudi Dutschke, who was reformulating the theory of class struggle as a battle for cultural hegemony propounded by the Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, while adding the Maoist allusion to the Long March, emphasising how the overthrow…
By winning the balance of power in the Senate at the August 2010 federal election, the Australian Greens have thereby moved from a position close to the margins of Australian politics to its centre. If they were to successfully implement their agenda, they would undermine the economic and social progress of our nation. The narrowly construed environmental policies of the Greens would choke off the level of wealth creation required to fund the technological innovation necessary to achieve ecologically sustainable development. With tactics reminiscent of Big Brother in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the hand of government would weigh ever more heavily upon us as it sought to extract more taxes to fund its burgeoning bureaucracies. The educational policies of the Greens would cut subsidies to non-government schools thereby restricting further…
There is never a shortage of examples of how Islam is slowly but surely creeping into Western democracies, with sharia law and other less than democratic features being promoted and eventually accepted. Democracy, of course, can be its own worst enemy as it seeks to accommodate itself to anyone and everyone, even those forces which are anti-democratic at heart. Four more examples appeared in the media recently, and all make for worrying reading. Consider, first, two overseas examples. Sweden’s third most populous city, Malmö, is now effectively a no-go zone for Swedes, police, firemen and emergency workers. A quarter of the population is Muslim, and anti-Western rioting has become commonplace there. As with many other European cities, many urban areas have come under the domination of Muslim radicals who are…
In a victory for freedom of speech, association and religion, the new Liberal-National Party government in Victoria has moved to repeal the previous Brumby Labor Government’s changes to the state’s Equal Opportunity Act, which greatly restricted freedom of religion. Last year, the state Labor Government’s attorney-general Rob Hulls initiated a new Equal Opportunity Act, which many Victorian Christian churches and religious organisations feared would provide anti-religious and anti-family activists opportunities to monitor, harass and litigate against any churches or religious agencies with which they disagreed. The Labor legislation, which was supported by the Greens and opposed by the Liberals, Nationals and Democratic Labor Party (DLP), gave the Victorian Equal Opportunity & Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) unprecedented new powers for investigating suspected “systematic discrimination”, even when no complaint had been lodged.…
My late husband, Charles Francis, AM, QC, during the course of his legal career acted for defendants in 48 murder trials. He would often be asked by naïve acquaintances: “How can you defend a man you know is guilty?” Charles would reply good-humouredly “Well, I don’t know that he is guilty unless he confesses and pleads guilty to murder, and, in any event, if I am available to take the case, it is my duty to do so and present the best defence I can.” (For the record, Charles obtained acquittals — or a reduction to manslaughter — in 47 of these cases.) I am reminded of Charles’s comment about the duty of a lawyer by what has happened in the USA in response to a campaign of political intimidation…
In another appalling case of judicial activism, anti-Christian bigotry and ruthless social engineering, two English High Court judges have effectively declared war on Christianity. These two mere mortals have made a ruling so bizarre, so immoral, and so mind-boggling, that one has to wonder why the British public have not run them out of town covered in tar and feathers. Their ruling makes a number of simply incredible declarations that: • the 1500-year Christian heritage of England is now simply to be dismissed altogether; • the tiny minority of homosexual activists are now the undisputed wielders of power in the nation today; • the well-being of children is not to be even considered or worried about in the slightest; •parents (at least foster-parents) have no right to instil values into…
Sir, A group of lobbyists and politicians have been preparing for a legislative assault on Queensland’s unborn children. They want a free run for abortion up to the point of a baby’s birth. There are remarkable similarities to be found in the history of slave ownership, trading and abortion. Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, white people had a legal right to own black slaves. Slaves were classed as property and had no rights. Britain, and therefore, Australia abolished ownership of slaves well before the United States did. In the US it finally took the 1861-1865 Civil War to outlaw the practice. The child of a pregnant woman is a separate entity from her. This child has its own DNA, a different identity and mostly has a different blood…
CALIFORNIA: Five Live Oak High School students’ First Amendment rights were challenged this year when they were asked to leave school because they donned American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo,* an offence one official called “incendiary”. Other students could wear or wave the Mexican flag and any number of other potentially offensive messages, but wearing the American flag in America is just too “incendiary”. To their credit, the Morgan Hill Unified School District did not concur with the suspensions, but the “offended” still got their way. Unfortunately, in America today, being offended works! It’s become an effective strategy for oppressing the freedom of those who disagree with the offended party. An Iowa Veterans Hospital is removing crosses and Christian symbols from its chapels because “offended” atheist complainers have successfully…
During the third week in September, heads of state and leaders of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other entities, some of them larger and more powerful than many sovereign states, gathered at a United Nations summit in New York to discuss the implementation and interpretation of the so-called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The MDGs are eight targets determined in 2000 by United Nations signatories and designed to overcome extreme poverty at a global level by the year 2015. No one disputes the desirability of attempting to develop and carry out a comprehensive approach to promote the common good worldwide. However, it is no surprise that the various competing economic, political and religious interests that make up our diverse world have come into conflict over important issues such…
In the old days the enemies of the free and democratic West could resort to violent revolution to overthrow capitalism, democracy and other objects deemed to be deserving of destruction. Social change by the barrel of the gun was a preferred way of radical social upheaval and revolution. Judge Vaughn R. Walker But Marxists and other revolutionaries also learned that a nation could be just as effectively overthrown when undermined from within. Taking over the institutions of power and influence can just as readily bring about the new social order desired by the radicals. A number of commentators have remarked on this over the years. Just to take one example, Roger Kimball discussed this theme in his important book, The Long March: How the cultural revolution of the 1960s changed…
In case you didn’t know it, ostriches hold court in the Victorian Legislative Council. July 28, 2010, saw yet another collective burying of heads in the sand by some 27 members of the state’s upper house. Not surprisingly it was the perennially “too hard” issue of late-term abortion which triggered this astonishing display of wilful blindness. To be fair to ostriches, the gawkish birds do not in fact partake in the laughable practice for which their species is so maligned, even if too many of our elected representatives do. What had our MPs ducking for cover was a motion from Peter Kavanagh MLC, of the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), calling for an inquiry by the Family and Community Development Committee into the post-natal deaths of babies born alive in Victoria…
Sir, At a conservative estimate, some 70,000 people are murdered in Australia each year. But even at election time few voters pay attention to this fact. I am referring of course to the killing of unborn babies by surgical abortion. Less than two years ago the law in Victoria was changed to permit, virtually, abortion on demand up to birth. Late-term abortions, with the baby being cut to pieces or having its brains suctioned out after a hole is made in the skull, must cause great pain. But an amendment requiring that anaesthetic be given to the baby was rejected by the Victorian Parliament. It is vital that in every election we vote for pro-life candidates and against those who promote abortion. It should be remembered that the right to…
Will Britain become the first contemporary Western nation to fully criminalise Christianity? It certainly seems to be heading that way. I have recorded one case after another of growing anti-Christian fanaticism in the United Kingdom. Much of it comes from the forces of political correctness, activist judiciaries and militant homosexual activists. The latest episode is just as appalling as previous examples. It has reached the point that to simply mention the “H” word in anything other than a fully positive sense is now a criminal offence. A tiny homosexual minority has managed to hold the entire nation to ransom, and anyone who dares to think otherwise is being hounded down by the heavy hand of the law. Police state This is called the making of a police state, and we…
Similar to Labor luminaries Julia Gillard and John Sutton, I also had a working-class upbringing and our family home was dominated by left-wing values. We lived on a housing commission estate in the northern Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, Dad was a member of the Australian Communist Party and I was enrolled in the Eureka Youth Movement. I still remember Dad screaming in rage at Robert Menzies (aka “Pig Iron Bob”) on the black-and-white television, and glossy magazines with heroic pictures of Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Lenin and Mao Zedong glowing with paternal care and revolutionary zeal. Dad taught me that the cry of liberty, equality and fraternity promised a utopia, one where injustice, discrimination and poverty would disappear and all would live according to Karl Marx’s maxim: from each according to…
Accompanied by leaders of the Catholic, Baptist, Presbyterian and Pentecostal churches, and with the strong support of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal Dr George Pell, went to Canberra on October 23 to inform both Government and Opposition of widespread church concern about and opposition to the proposed charter of rights or human rights act. At the same time, he issued this statement. The Christian churches strongly support human rights and their attendant responsibilities. But religious freedom should not be eroded by stealth. The Brennan Committee’s report on human rights gives the government two options: an upfront charter of rights or a Trojan horse version. The upfront charter is the committee’s proposal for a federal human rights act. The committee’s chairman, Fr Frank…
This is the address given by former Canadian Government Minister, the Hon. David Kilgour, at the Forum on Human Rights in China, held in the Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, Canada on May 27, 2009. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Massacre and 10 full years since the merciless persecution of Falun Gong began, I feel compelled to use my limited time today on these issues, despite those who say any criticism of China’s party-state should be muted during the present world economic crisis. Both issues, including the use of mostly Falun Gong prisoners of conscience in forced labour camps, are haunting testimonials against a totalitarian political system, which has over the past two decades also encouraged “anything goes” economics. Tiananmen Square massacre In the spring of 1989, hundreds…
Prime targets of pro-abortion ideologues are sidewalk counsellors outside abortion clinics who seek to dissuade women from going ahead with an abortion. David Perrin reports. Killing of the unborn has recently been decriminalised in Victoria, following the example of the Australian Capital Territory and Western Australia. It is expected that in the future other states may follow this trend, with perhaps Queensland being the next state to follow the decriminalisation path. This trend has since been compounded by the Rudd Government’s approval of the use of overseas aid money to fund the killing of the unborn. These changes have been driven by pro-abortion ideologues of both genders on both sides of politics who subscribe to the radical feminist agenda. This ideology has found its way into mainstream society over a…
So euphoric are Western businessmen and political leaders at the prospects of conducting lucrative trade with China that they downplay or ignore Beijing’s repressive police-state apparatus and corrupt business practices. Joseph Poprzeczny reports. Westerners are in danger of ignoring what is really happening in China because of endless media reports and political commentary that focus solely on what is described as the Chinese economic miracle. According to China-born New Zealand-based academic, Professor Dong Li, growing numbers of blinkered Westerners are failing to present a complete picture of what is happening in his former homeland. Professor Li, once an academic at the prestigious Shanghai International Studies University, delivered a keynote address at the annual Summer Sounds Symposium held in Blenheim, New Zealand, during June 20-22. In his talk, titled “What hasn’t…
China’s grisly practice of harvesting the organs of executed Falun Gong practitioners was publicly exposed in 2006 in a ground-breaking international report co-authored by former Canadian government minister, David Kilgour. Early in May 2008, he addressed the Michigan Association of Nurse Anesthetists. This is an edited extract of his paper. When people understand the state of public health across China as a consequence of almost three decades of virtually “anything-goes” capitalism, they can better contextualise the independent (updated) report on organ-pillaging that David Matas and I did last year. Permit me therefore to start with some indicators on health among the Chinese people today. The source is an article by Joseph Kahn and Jim Yardley, titled “As China roars, pollution reaches deadly extremes” (New York Times, August 26, 2007). URL:…
Traditionalists denounced as “literacy warriors” THE LITERACY WARS:Why teaching children to read and write is a battleground in Australiaby Ilana Snyder(Sydney: Allan & Unwin)Paperback: 256 pagesRec. price: $32.95 Anyone who presumes to write a book on literacy is tempting fate, because everything they say will be scrutinised with the eye of pedantry. Ilana Snyder, an associate professor in Monash University’s faculty of education, escapes fairly lightly. She falls into the common error of using “reticent” when she means “reluctant”, and there is a dangling participle on page 47. She also fails to detect the irony in Christopher Pearson’s playful use of postmodern jargon, “interrogate the texts”. Threatened Jargon is something that Snyder herself uses tendentiously, as in our old friend the “moral panic”, and the “privileging” of this, that and…
China has waged a relentless global propaganda campaign against Falun Gong practitioners, reports Canadian human rights lawyer David Matas. The pursuit of human rights in China, as in any country, has to be approached strategically. What is the most effective way way of combating human rights violations in China? The best strategy is the most direct: combating human rights violations frontally, centrally rather than peripherally. The Communist Party of China rules China through repression, having killed since its inception tens of millions to achieve and maintain power – more than Nazi Germany and the Stalinist Soviet Union combined. Repression of human rights in China takes many forms with many victims. The Communist Party of China persecutes anyone whose beliefs differ from those of the Communists or anyone who tells the…
Beijing was awarded the 2008 Olympics Games by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 2001, on the condition that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would improve its appalling human rights record. Human rights in China, however, have sharply deteriorated in the run-up to the Games, as Peter Westmore recently reported in a speech before an international forum, “Human Rights in China and the 2008 Olympics”, held in Taipei on February 21-22. In this seminar, we are examining the link between the 2008 Olympic Games, to be held within six months, and the Chinese Communist Party. The Olympic Games have periodically been used for political purposes since the 1936 games were used by the German National Socialist Party to validate Nazi ideology. In 1936, it was done by stage-managed rallies, the…
Learning how to forgive murderers LEFT TO TELL:Discovering God Amidst the Rwandan Holocaustby Immaculée Ilibagiza(Carlsbad, California: Hay House, Inc.)Paperback: 215 pagesRec. price: AUD$29.90 This is the true story – graphic, gripping, harrowing and heartrending – of a brave young woman who survived the horrors of a genocide and learnt, at the same time, that love is greater than hate. Immaculée Ilibagiza was born into a relatively prosperous family in a Rwandan village in central Africa. Her childhood was idyllic, permeated with the extraordinary love of her own family, a love that spread out amongst numerous uncles, aunts, cousins and friends. The only shadows in her young life were cast when she occasionally received cutting comments to remind her of something she had hardly ever been aware of: she was a…
The Chinese Government’s horrific practice of killing Falun Gong practitioners for their organs was the subject of a human rights forum, sponsored by the Epoch Times newspaper and hosted by The Thomas More Centre, North Melbourne, on June 20. In his address to the forum, Peter Westmore suggested that the Australian Government is publicly playing down the issue for fear of reprisals from Beijing. Despite Chinese Government denials, there can be no doubt that Falun Gong practitioners, in particular, have been executed in large numbers – at least in the thousands, and more likely in the tens of thousands – so that their organs can be sold for profit. We know this from information derived from many different sources. First and foremost, the Chinese Government admits that organs are harvested…
Substantial additional evidence has come to light confirming that China is continuing to execute political prisoners in order to sell their organs to patients seeking transplants. Peter Westmore reports. David Kilgour and David Matas, the two Canadian human rights lawyers who in 2006 released a landmark report which investigated allegations of organ-harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China, have released a revised report into the allegations. David Kilgour, who visited Australia and met journalists and parliamentarians in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne, is a former member of the Canadian Parliament and former Canadian Government secretary of state for the Asia-Pacific region. David Matas is an immigration, refugee and international human rights lawyer, in private practice in Winnipeg, Canada. Titled Bloody Harvest, their new report is based on the 2006 one, but…
Man’s inhumanity to man GENOCIDE: A Historyby William D. Rubinstein(London: Pearson Longman)Hardcover: 336 pagesRec. price: AUD$59.95 The now familiar word, “genocide”, was coined during World War II by Polish-Jewish legal expert, Raphael Lemkin (1900-59), who had earlier investigated barbarities inflicted upon two Middle Eastern Christian minorities: the Turkish massacre of the Armenians during World War I, and Iraq’s massacre of Assyrians in 1933. Professor William D. Rubinstein’s survey of genocide is valuable for many reasons, not least because he presents a long overview of what is now categorised as a crime rather than focusing solely upon last century’s well-known mass exterminations under Hitler, Stalin and Mao. “Mass murder is probably as old as the human race, but only in the 20th century has it become so significant a part of…
A new conservative women’s activist group has arisen on U.S. college campuses, the Network of Enlightened Women (NeW). It is a very different breed to feminist groups marching for “Choice” (abortion rights) or “Diversity” (lesbian rights). NeW activists bake chocolate-chip cookies and protest against campus productions of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues – a sexually-explicit play that degrades women and implicitly promotes lesbian rape. (This play has also been performed on Australian campuses). Now two years old, NeW is established in seven American states and has achieved the support of leading conservative women in Washington. It is a campus alternative to the Feminist Majority and the National Organization for Women (NOW). The leaders of NeW recently participated in the Conservative Leadership Seminar in Washington DC, where speakers included U.S. Secretary…
The Australian Government has a duty to remind Beijing that killing people for their organs is a crime against humanity. On August 21, Melbourne’s Thomas More Centre hosted Canadian former MP and government minister, David Kilgour, co-author of a report exposing Chinese organ-harvesting; Edward McMillan-Scott, Vice-President of the European Parliament; and Madame Dongfan Zhang, a Falun Gong practitioner and former Chinese prisoner. The Chinese Government kills prisoners of conscience to harvest their hearts, kidneys, livers, corneas, and other organs, a recent report has alleged. Both the Federal Government and Opposition have called for an independent inquiry into the allegations following a recent visit to Australia by former Canadian Cabinet minister, David Kilgour, and Vice-President of the European Parliament, Edward McMillan-Scott. The allegations were documented in a 66-page Report into Allegations…
A Canadian former government minister is seeking Australia’s help to end China’s harvesting of body parts from healthy individuals imprisoned without trial, writes Peter Westmore. Michael Kilgour, a Canadian lawyer, and former member of parliament and government minister, has travelled to Australia to seek Australian support for an end to China’s practice of harvesting organs from executed political prisoners. With a human rights lawyer, Michael Matas, Mr Kilgour made a careful examination of evidence of systematic persecution of practitioners of Falun Gong, a Chinese self-improvement association, which is based on the principles of justice, tolerance and compassion. Many thousands of practitioners have been imprisoned since former Chinese President, Jiang Zemin, authorised a crackdown on them in 1999, after they had staged peaceful protests in Beijing against a Communist Party campaign…
A Victorian Government human rights committee has misleadingly claimed that an overwhelming majority of Victorians are demanding a charter of rights, says Bill Muehlenberg. The Victorian Human Rights Consultation Committee has recently released its report, Rights, Responsibilities and Respect. This is the outcome of a recent public inquiry into the supposed need for a bill of rights – or a charter of rights – in Victoria. The committee informs us that it received 2,524 written submissions, and held numerous public inquiries. It claims that, “overall, 84 per cent of the people we talked to or received submissions from … said that they wanted to see the law changed to better protect their human rights”. This 250-page report lists 35 recommendations, each explained in detail, and concludes with a draft bill…
Australia’s laws banning human cloning and restricting embryo experimentation are up for review, reports Richard Egan. The review of the Prohibition of Human Cloning Act 2002 and the Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 has now begun in earnest, with the legislation review committee producing an Issues Paper: outline of existing legislation and issues for public consideration and calling for submissions from members of the public to be received by September 9, 2005. The issues paper reminds us that these two acts, passed by the Federal Parliament in December 2002, along with the complementary legislation in each State and Territory, taken together: prohibit human cloning for any purpose; prohibit the creation of human embryos, by any means, for any purpose other than for attempting to achieve a pregnancy in a…
Diagnosing the Bridget Jones syndrome THE MISEDUCATION OF WOMENby James TooleyChicago: Ivan R. Dee. Paperback RRP: A$39.95 This is a book that will no doubt cause many feminists to have angina and fits of apoplexy – especially as it’s written by a man. Many others who read it will find a refreshing counterpoint to feminist arguments that, in order for women to achieve equality as men, gender-neutrality must be pursued. This brilliant book, that is long overdue, examines how radical “equality” feminism has influenced education policies since the 1970s to adopt their agenda of gender reform, particularly to eliminate stereotyping. The author, James Tooley, is professor of education policy at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. His arguments are powerful as they are written from in-depth critiques of feminist literature,…
The Federal Government has cut short the time allowed to debate laws prohibiting human cloning and limiting human embryo experimentation, writes Peter Westmore. The Federal Government is cutting short the time allowed for debate on laws prohibiting human cloning and limiting human embryo experimentation. It has appointed a high-powered committee of lawyers, doctors and scientists to review the legislation it passed in 2002 governing these activities. The six-member review panel has commenced its work, and has called for public submissions by September 9. It will then have just three months to hear oral submissions and produce its report before December 19, 2005. The inordinately short time allowed for the review leads to the conclusion that the Federal Government does not want a protracted public controversy over this issue, as happened…
As the Federal Parliament prepares to consider Australia’s policy on reproductive technology, the United Nations General Assembly in New York has voted overwhelmingly to ban all forms of human cloning. The General Assembly adopted the UN Declaration on Human Cloning, by which member states were called on to adopt all measures necessary to prohibit all forms of human cloning incompatible with human dignity and the protection of human life. The measure was overwhelmingly adopted, with 84 nations in favour, 34 against, and 37 abstentions. Australia joined the United States, Poland, Hungary, Uganda and many other countries, in a resolution sponsored by the central American state of Costa Rica. Dr David Prentice, an American research scientist who specialises in stem-cell research, worked closely with Costa Rica to educate member states on…
Sir, C.J. Ward quotes Frank Knopfelmacher’s denunciation of “the Holocaust Industry” (News Weekly, February 12, 2005), possibly unaware of the more important, erudite and detailed criticism levelled by the late Chief Rabbi Lord Immanuel Jakobovits in his lecture on “Religious Response to the Holocaust”, given in London in 1987. In a learned review of Jewish responses to past tragedies, he wrote: “… the Holocaust has now generated an entire industry, with handsome profits for writers, researchers, film-makers, monument-builders, museum-planners, conference-organisers and even politicians seeking to dramatise ‘Never again!’ slogans. Partners in this big business also include some rabbis and theologians, with rewarding yields of fame and royalties.” The communist Holocaust preceded Hitler’s: it began in 1917 when the teaching of Judaism to Jewish children became a capital crime: both grandfathers…
Medicare’s funding of 73,000 annual abortions prompted Health Minister Tony Abbott to express publicly his dismay at presiding over such a system earlier this year in March. Since then, and particularly since the return of the Howard Government to a fourth term of office, there has been an escalating debate on abortion among Federal MPs and other commentators. As well as Mr Abbott, a number of Coalition MPs have expressed their concern at the high rate of abortion in Australia, continued Medicare funding of abortion and particularly the performing of late-term abortions. Those who have spoken out include Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson; Minister for Veterans’ Affairs De-Anne Kelly; Special Minister for State Eric Abetz; Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Christopher Pyne; backbencher Alan Cadman; newly elected MP, Stuart Henry and…
Old Moore’s Almanac Watching the US election campaign, and the actual voting processes, was a delightful experience: not to be missed. During the campaign, to see the principal American television and newspaper networks effortlessly blowing their cover, revealing bias, a readiness to manage and doctor news and rig polls, and to demonise and misrepresent the Republicans … made our local lot seem like vestal virgins. Murdoch’s people, going against the tide, stood out. No wonder his networks, etc, are making such progress in America. And no wonder the Beautiful People in New York and California hate him so. He is in virtually the same situation in the UK. Living dangerously, is our Rupert. But the amazing antics around the “opinion polls” – and, sheer rapture, the exit polls – would…
Dear Mr Latham, You are blamed for the ALP defeat on October 9, but my view is you were seduced by the Greens, gays and gender-feminists, who took advantage of your inexperience. The gays, for instance: did you really believe the Kinsey nonsense that they are 10 per cent of the population, when surveys have repeatedly shown they comprise between one and two per cent? Of that number, many are not activists – effeminate Fred who lives with his pal Henry and just wants a quiet existence, would be quite perturbed at the prospect of “marriage”. Now you aim to have young, “progressive” women on your front bench when it is their “Emily’s List” policies which were responsible for your election debacle! “Emily’s List” candidates support abortion, affirmative action (discrimination…
Richard Egan explains why the battle over human embryo experimentation and cloning is so important, and where it will go from here. The Research Involving Human Embryos Act 2002 will come into effect this year, permitting, under licence from a Commonwealth committee, destructive research on human embryos judged to be “excess” to the requirements of women undergoing IVF. Research on human embryos is intimately linked to IVF and related reproductive technologies. Louise Brown was, in 1979, the first child born following in vitro fertilisation. Within five short years the Warnock Committee in the United Kingdom had recommended in favour of allowing human embryos to be used for scientific research, including both excess embryos from the IVF clinics and human embryos created specifically for research. In the same year – 1984,…
Clyde Cameron, one of the most prominent leaders of the labour movement in Australia for many decades, and a former Minister for Labor in the Whitlam Government, recently gave the response to an address by Peter Westmore to a National Civic Council function in South Australia. Tonight we are in the presence of Peter Westmore, who has held the position of National President of the National Civic Council since the death of its founder, Bob Santamaria, in 1998. Peter is also the editor of News Weekly and has continued the high standard set by Bob in publishing details of happenings not published in other newspapers. Every person who wishes to learn the truth about globalisation and the sale of publicly-owned property like the Commonwealth Bank and other assets that have…
In Melbourne’s Herald Sun (October 7, 2002) word wizard Andrew Bolt struck with a bolt of lightning at the ALP’s affirmative action policies (a 40 per cent female preselection quota for women in winnable seats) by somewhat facetiously suggesting that the higher percentage of women who are susceptible to the blandishments of witchcraft meant that women as a group are less capable of being politicians. In her response, Nicola Roxon, Labor spokeswoman for Children and Youth, and national convenor of the Labor Women’s Network (“A hex on you, Bolt”, Herald Sun, October 8) failed to illuminate why Labor women need preferential treatment via quotas when the ALP prides itself on being an enlightened party which does not discriminate against women and minorities. Male support Apparently the ALP considers discriminating against…
One of the major arguments about the killing of human embryos to obtain their stem cells for use in medical experiments is “where does human life begin?” Recently, Senator Amanda Vanstone, Minister for Family and Community Services, admitted she was confused about the matter. She said that there was a wide range of views on the issue in the community Those that wish to use human embryos, claim that human life does not begin at fertilisation but at some time later. Whilst this is convenient to their argument, it is wrong! Both science and religion have defined human life as beginning at fertilisation. Definition Recently, Dr Anthony Fisher, Professor of Bioethics at the John Paul Institute for Marriage and Family, produced an article with all the scientific evidence for The…
The book Hitler’s Holocaust has just been released. It was written to accompany the outstanding documentary series of the same name shown on SBS earlier this year. Book and series are the latest in a seemingly endless stream of material – theses, articles, films, plays, exhibitions – on the Fuehrer and his Final Solution. As far as it goes, this is a good thing. The disappearance of history as a school subject is both a symptom and a cause of our increasing historical illiteracy, and the Holocaust is one event we must retain in our collective memory at all costs. But why is there no parallel interest in Soviet Russia and Red China? Go through the non-fiction section of any mainstream bookshop at any shopping mall and you are sure…
Federal Labor’s progress in moving on after its third successive defeat is increasingly a case of a platoon marching one step forward and two steps back. While only the most optimistic Labor stalwarts were expecting a significant “bounce” from trading in Kim Beazley for Simon Crean, the Opposition has simply been drifting and clearly would have lost another election had it been held this month. Howard’s victory in the November election was no aberration, and senior Labor figures who tried on the ruse that the nation only swung behind Howard because of the events surrounding September 11 and the state of fear that engulfed the world at that time, are being exposed as time passes. Easy options If anything, the Labor Party under Crean looks further away from regaining government…
Sir, I applaud the decision to publish a Special Edition of News Weekly (January 13, 2001) against the economic rationalists who favour the globalisation of corporate capitalism, thus enabling foreign multinational corporations to shift Australian industries to the cheap labour costs of Asia. Not only has this resulted in mass unemployment, but globalisation is allowing 60 per cent of multinationals operating in our country to pay no tax, and 40 per cent to pay very little tax and merge with other multinationals in order to eliminate competition. I recall that in 1936 Bob Santamaria wrote an editorial for the newly launched Catholic Worker linking monopoly capitalism with the evils of Communism and saying: “Communism is NOT our greatest adversity. The position of Public Enemy No 1 is reserved for Capitalism,…
Employment Services Minister Tony Abbott must feel like a World War I Digger who has gone over the top from the trenches in the face of enemy fire only to look behind and find no one there to support him. The Minister has found himself doing battle against the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) over its draft guidelines on discrimination of religious organisations in employment. The Commission wants to stop religious organisations discriminating in favor of their own kind in job applications. Hence a Christian employment agency will no longer be able to seek a “Christian” for a job, references from priests or ministers cannot be a requirement. Furthermore, the refusal of employment of someone who would otherwise be a source of potential scandal to a church organisation,…