Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Royal Commission, anti-discrimination law and Abbott

It's pretty obvious that Labor's main strategy to win the next election is to terminate Tony Abbott with extreme prejudice (or should that be "tolerance"?). They consider his seeming lack of connection with the Australian people in general and women in particular as the Opposition's weakest point. They've been heartened by the success of Gillard's misogyny speech to hurt him electorally and have decided to keep going with the nasty personal smears, increasing their intensity if possible.

When you consider this game plan, it sheds light on a couple of their recent announcements. Take the Royal Commission into child sexual abuse. Obviously, this is going to focus heavily on the Catholic Church. That's a great way to smear Abbott by association.

Then there's this recent huge change to anti-discrimination legislation which makes it so much easier for people to make complaints. This could well be a tactic to draw Abbott into criticizing the law, thereby leaving him open to accusations of homophobia, racist, sexism and all the rest.

Combine the nastiness and cynicism of these goals with Labor's dreadful record on delivering outcomes and it's likely these big initiatives will cause more problems than they solve. They'll spawn horror stories galore before too long, just you watch!

What do you reckon? Are they that cynical, or do you think that maybe Labor does have some sincere motivations for these recent decisions?

4 comments:

  1. I believe Tony will/could nullify the potential attempts of smear sticking by supporting in principal the Royal Commission. As others have said its a few decades late but better now than later given the local cover-up concerns. Child protection is high on my do to list.

    The Catholic church has clearly had this problem internationally in the US and Ireland. It needs to be dealt with locally. I could argue more from a Reformation point of view concerning Biblical doctrine and the Way forward for them, suffice to say St Peter "the Rock" and one of Jesus' leading original 12 Disciples was married (nuff said - we could go on).

    Civil Liberties advocates should be "going off their collective nuts" if complaints can shift the defense to a matter of disproving guilt. Eg your assumed to be guilty if a complaint is made against you. - It could drum up allot of business for lawyers potentially. Much in the same way a baby bonus created great family planning decisions in our cities lower socioeconomic suburbs. (Or a GFC cash bonus hit the flat screen TV market)

    The collation should meet every proposed bill on its merit and seek to improve them, of course.

    More importantly they need to have a positive vision built right over Labor great weakness' to forward their own agenda with the people of this greatly positioned nation. - My Google+ account is open for ideas (I have plenty)...

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  2. I am not a Christian and so obviously not a Catholic and I look at this sudden rush to a Royal Commission and wonder "why now" and what does it hope to achieve? The Catholic branch of Christendom has an atrocious record in dealing with child abuse but I suspect that it is not confined to Catholics in particular or Christians as a whole and my own religion has at least one well publicised case of abuse in one of our schools. I would like to see a definition of what is going to be considered as child abuse. I certainly regard the genital mutilation of young girls as child abuse but by extension was I also abused as a baby by being circumcised? Personally I don't think I was but female mutilation is a different issue. Circumcision has no deleterious effect on sexual gratification but female genital mutilation does - that is its whole purpose. Would we not be better off in identifying the victims of abuse and putting our resources into helping them to exorcise whatever devils beset them than making lawyers richer in a decade long Royal Commission? Bring abusers to justice by all means and as a matter of priority but is it necessary to conduct such an expensive exercise to do so? My opinion is that it is a cynical exercise aimed at a Catholic Opposition Leader in the lead up to an election and the last time a Labour [deliberately misspelt] politician had a sincere motivation to "do good" for this country was when Cocky was an egg. L'chaim.

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  3. Well said, David. I completely agree, particularly when it comes to the lawyers.
    The RC should make a point to not focus on the Christian church, but how/where abuse has occurred, regardless of the organisation/religion (abuse occurs in all religions), and focus on identifying the steps to minimise this in the future, and to help genuine victims (where there is compensation to be had, you can be assured that more than one liar will come out of the woodwork).
    I would also like to know how many children were born into abuse to multi-generational welfare recipients, particularly in response to the baby bonus.

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  4. I'm not exactly sure the government wants to "terminate" Abbott just yet. Rightly or wrongly, they fear Turnbull riding in on a white horse, as a compromise candidate between the two warring parties to unite the country and steal the election.

    The idea that this is a political stunt to get Abbott quite frankly smacks of paranoia. This is a move that is almost universally supported by the electorate, because it is the right thing to do.

    Sure, the government is aware that Abbott will be on the back foor over this; sometimes the right thing to do aligns with political goals. But, aside from his relationship with Pell, it's hard to see how this can be seen as a big issue for him. Still, if you guys want to keep framing the Royal Commission as a weakness for Abbott, then so be it.

    yours regally,
    ThePirateKing

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