Beyond The Fringe

The National Indigenous Times spiked the Labor Party for reneging on their election promise to change the date of Australia Day to one more suited to celebration by all Australians.

There’s no good reason for indigenous people to celebrate Invasion Day – it’s a day of mourning and remembrance of genocide for the aboriginal people.

The promise was contained in the ALP’s National Platform, a document that outlines the policy aspirations of the party and which is agreed to at the ALP’s National Convention every three years.

The current National Platform commits the ALP to implementing the six recommendations made in the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation (CAR)’s final report, issued in 2000.

One of those recommendations is to implement CAR’s Roadmap to Reconciliation.

And an “essential” action of that report is to change the date of Australia Day.

The promise is contained in the 2007 National Platform, and also the previous 2004 platform.

But this week, the Rudd government confirmed it had no intention of making good on the promise.

Last week, NIT submitted a series of questions on the promise to the Prime Minister’s office. After no reply, NIT was directed to the office of the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Jenny Macklin.

Government officials finally replied with a single line statement: “Australia Day will continue to be celebrated on January 26.”

The debate over whether to change Australia Day, the celebration of the First Fleet’s landing, to something that is more inclusive is a heated one.

…

After receiving no explanation for why the promise would not be kept, NIT asked the Prime Minister for further comment on their broken election promise. The questions were directed to the acting Indigenous affairs minister, Tanya Plibersek.

Again, the reply flatly refused to address the issue: “The Government has made significant progress in a number of key areas in our first 14 months although we acknowledge that there’s a lot more work to be done,” a spokesperson for Ms Plibersek said.

The ALP intransigence is all the more ironic given Rudd’s selection of Mick Dodson as Australian of the Year.

Mick is a staunch advocate for changing the date for Australia Day.

WITHIN minutes of accepting the Australian of the Year award yesterday, the indigenous leader Mick Dodson told the Rudd Government it needed to move the date of Australia Day because January 26 represented a “day of mourning” for many of his people.

…

Professor Dodson, a lawyer, also called for financial compensation for the stolen generations and for changes to government policy, including on the Northern Territory intervention.

A Yawuru man, he said he felt so strongly the current Australia Day excluded indigenous people that he considered refusing the nomination for the award but decided to accept it after listening to his family. Australians were “mature enough about it now” to consider moving the date, which currently commemorates the First Fleet’s arrival in Sydney – “the day on which our world came crashing down”.

Professor Dodson suggested February 13, the date the Rudd Government last year formally apologised to stolen generations.

On Nov 24 the UN General Assembly adopted a final draft Resolution with 85 countries affirmative to 50 negative and 42 abstaining, calling on all countries to provide “adequate protection against acts of hatred resulting from defamation of religions and the incitement to religious hatred in general”.

The US Government representative submitted against the Resolution:

While deploring hateful speech, his Government had a strong view that people should be free to express their opinion in challenge to an ideology of hate. He believed that some States were seeking to restrict expression in the name of defamation of religion, when they should be promoting dialogue involving all peoples. The language appeared to suggest that, like race, one’s religion was a characteristic that one could not change, which was in direct conflict to Article 18 of the Universal Declaration, which said that individuals had a right to change and choose their religion, and to manifest their beliefs through its teaching, practice and observance, or to choose not to practice a religion at all. It was unhelpful and incorrect to suggest that race and religion were the same.

On behalf of the EU, France’s delegate, also responded opposing the Resolution:

… the European Union believed that human rights were indivisible. The right to freedom of expression was at the essence of the right to thought, conscience and beliefs … it was necessary to make distinctions between incitement to religious hatred and the right to discuss or criticize religion, adding that only the former should be forbidden. … He also could not accept the idea of defamation of religion being integrated into the human rights framework. International human rights law should be aimed at protecting people in exercising their freedom of religion, not in protecting religions, as such.

Australia voted too against the adoption of the draft Resolution, which will reach a final vote in the General Assembly this month.

In 2004, Abdelfattah Amor (Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief) identified two cases of concern ‘… when religion is the property of the state, and when the state is the property of religion’, in which light, theistic and totalitarian states are problematic.

After several years of intimidation and death threats, Danish publisher Flemming Rose yesterday said:

This is a global struggle for the right to free speech, which is going on every day in different parts of the world where people are trying to intimidate and silence those who are critical of religion, of authoritarian regimes and movements trying to undermine free speech.

We have to make it very clear that on a global level people who are in favor of free speech have to unite in order to get rid of all kinds of laws around the world that limit the right to free speech — blasphemy laws, laws protecting dictators, laws which are being used to silence people who are critical … in a democracy, you cannot insist on special treatments of your religious feelings. That would be discrimination against non-believers. You have to accept that from time to time you may be offended by what people are saying or publishing in a newspaper, and that this is no reason for violence. Dissatisfaction can be expressed through demonstrations, letters to the editor, lobbying parliament.

The Fringe has a fair idea most people, religious or not, have idiosyncratic beliefs of some sort or another and they are welcome to them, along with any associated legal group hugs. Yet whilst applauding the value of a pluralist society, when those who base their particular world views and rule sets on unprovable faith wish to institutionalise these in bodies politic in order to impose them on unwilling others, the Fringe detector fires up.

The proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions. Kevin Rudd clearly understands the political aspects of Christianity:

… the Gospel is both personal and social. And if it’s social it therefore has a political dimension as well.

Through High Court decisions, Australians have ‘implied freedom of political communication’.

Issues arising from these decisions include defining when communication is ‘political’ and when the freedom should prevail over competing public interests.

Does the spectacle over the past few years of the ALP ‘engaging’ with fundamentalists to woo votes ‘in the suburbs of outer metro Australia’ echo events leading to the DLP split, after which Labor spent more than 20 years in the wilderness?

The Rudd team’s pragmatism may have helped secure electoral victory when there was a ‘desire for certainty in an uncertain country in an uncertain age, in an uncertain world’ concurrent with a major growth spurt in the pentecostal movement. Climates of fear seem to encourage fundamentalism.

However, continuing to accommodate the political goals of the modern, corporatised, morality-obsessed religious right – with a post-secular public intellectual moralist on the left flank – steering Australians ‘beyond the questions of personal, sexual morality into the broader social domain as well’, may run the risk of alienating adherents of healthy scepticism predominant in Australian culture, with a heavy price to pay down a one-way track. Not to mention the old adage that if ‘you lie down with dogs, you tend to get up with fleas’.

Submissions to the Australian Human Rights Commission Freedom of Religion and Belief in the 21st Century Discussion Paper are open till Jan 31, 09. The paper canvasses amongst many issues whether a legislated national Charter of Rights would add to the freedoms of religion and belief contained in the present Australian Constitution.

Section 116 of the current Commonwealth of Australian Constitution Act states that:

The Commonwealth shall not make any law for establishing any religion, or for imposing any religious observance, or for prohibiting the free exercise of any religion, and no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth.

Questions in the discussion paper germane to religion and politics include:

1. When considering the separation of religion and state, are there any issues that presently concern you?
2. Do religious or faith-based groups have undue influence over government and/or does the government have undue influence over religious or faith based groups?
3. Would a legislated national Charter of Rights add to these freedoms of religion and belief?

And more:

1. a) How would you describe the interface between religion and politics and cultural aspirations in contemporary Australia?
   b) What issues does this include?
2. How should government manage tensions that develop between aspirations?
3. How do you perceive gender in faith communities?
4. Do you believe there is equality of gender in faith communities?
5. What do you think should be the relationship between the right to gender equality and the right to religious freedom in Australia?
6. Citizenship and Australian values have emerged as central issues, how do you balance integration and cultural preservation?
7. What are reasonable expectations to have of citizens’ civic responsibility, rights, participation and knowledge?
8. Is there a role for religious voices, alongside others in the policy debates of the nation?

Of contemporary interest related to the Rudd government’s predilection with censoring the internet is this question:

Are there religious or moral implications in the development of new technologies such as the internet and or mobile phones, especially in regard to religious vilification and hatred?

Is it of concern that the proposed HREOC Religious Freedom Act appears to move beyond protection of individual belief to protection of group beliefs?

R2.5

For the purposes of the Religious Freedom Act, religion and belief should be given a wide meaning, covering the broad spectrum of personal convictions and matters of conscience. It should include theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs. It should include minority and non-mainstream religions and belief systems as well as those of a more traditional or institutionalised nature. Religion or belief should be defined as a particular collection of ideas and/or practices:

1. that relate to the nature and place of humanity in the universe and, where applicable, the relation of humanity to things supernatural
2. that encourage or require adherents to observe particular standards or codes of conduct or, where applicable, to participate in specific practices having supernatural significance
3. that are held by an identifiable group regardless of how loosely knit and varying in belief and practice
4. that are seen by adherents as constituting a religion or system of belief.

The definition should not apply to all beliefs but only to those that clearly involve issues of personal conviction, conscience or faith. This definition would not cover beliefs which are caused by mental illness or which are motivated by criminal intent.

R2.6

The obligations in the Religious Freedom Act should apply to individuals, corporations, public and private bodies and all other legal persons who maybe subject to Commonwealth legislation.

R3.15

The federal Attorney-General’s department should convene an inter-faith dialogue:

1. to examine the question of methods of coercion in religious belief and practice and how they should be dealt with
2. to consider whether legal limitations should be imposed on religious groups regarding coercive tactics
3. to formulate an agreed list of minimum standards for the practice of religious groups

R5.3

The proposed Religious Freedom Act should proscribe the advocacy of religious hatred that constitutes incitement to discrimination, hostility or violence as required by ICCPR article 20. The Act should exempt from the proscription of religious vilification, acts done reasonably and in good faith:

1. in the performance, exhibition or distribution of an artistic work
2. in the course of any statement, publication, discussion or debate made or held for any genuine academic, artistic or scientific purpose or any other genuine purpose in the public interest, or
3. in making or publishing a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest

R5.4
The process and remedies available for contravention of the religious vilification provision should be civil remedies similar to those provided for in the racial hatred provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).

The Atheist Foundation of Australia makes good points in respect to religious coercion and the rights of children:

‘Religion’ falls into an entirely different category for it is an aspect of culture. Religion has no intrinsic genetic link. A person’s religion is almost universally determined by infant brainwashing and indoctrination by the parents, carers and culture of the child.

This occurs generation after generation without any evaluation of the validity of the particular religion that is being implanted in the receptive mind.

While there are laws against the physical abuse of children there appears to be none against the far more damaging mental abuse. This should not be and is a serious flaw apparent in the legislation of every country.

Furthermore:

The A.F.A accepts the scientific viewpoint that there is no evidence of anything supernatural and until some factual evidence is produced this is the logical viewpoint. The onus of proof lies with the proposer of such a concept.

To posit a belief system on presumed or imagined array of supernatural elements, persons, and places yet be unable to produce a shred of evidence, surely must rate as a scam.

Is the above an example of religious discrimination?

We are protected by law against other scams, so why should religious scams enjoy special protections?

Do religious arguments (i.e. arguments without rational proof) have a place in the Australian parliamentary process, and if so, how can these be balanced against primary arguments for individual rights to free speech and expression? Is there a present danger in Australia of the State becoming ‘the property of religion’ and other bodies of anti-rationalist thought and that ‘defamation of religion’ might be codified by stealth in the proposed Religious Freedom Act?

Cartoonist Kurt Westerguaard, who’s still under police protection after years in hiding, expresses his intimate understanding of religiopolitical phenomena:

Increasing religiosity results in greater intolerance and restrictiveness. Things become complicated when all of life is defined by religion. For those gripped by it and even more for all those who are not.

Life on the Fringe is complicated enough already.

Our Kevvie’s recent incoming and associated twitbites make for fun reading … here’s some favs to date – the characteristic laconic, down-to-earth verging on shameless Aussie lingo is alive and twittering.

rogers: @KevinRuddPM Frosty handshake? Why didn’t you sock that arsehole in the guts…?

hortovanyi: @fang mate, I’m always well behaved on here .. the only person I’m not sure about is @KevinRuddPM

grodscorp: @KevinRuddPM Would’ve thought you wouldn’t need to do dishes at White House dinner, Kevvie.

ninjamoeba: I love @KevinRuddPM ’s bio: “PM.” Surprisingly succinct.

After Kev’s first, very muted, ‘vpod’ offering:

jimbiosis: @KevinRuddPM Sir, “growing the cake” is a mixed metaphor.

owenhodda: What is this vpod @KevinRuddPM speaks of? I am not down with the cool kid lingo

jamesfehon: @KevinRuddPM you mean a vlog?

lenier: @KevinRuddPM Re: “vpod”. You may have developed a term where many already exist. Welcome to Web 2.0! You’re fitting right in.

chrissylvester: just watched @KevinRuddPM’s vpod about the G20 and wanted to let you know he wished we’d sent @TurnbullMalcolm instead – chrissylvester team

Several commentators express concern about correct twitgrammar:

calvinccc: @KevinRuddPM My first thought was: wow the PM’s twittering in the 3rd person

danupoyner: Shock! @KevinRuddPM has changed from 1st to 3rd person. I like to think that it is actually still Kevin, just talking in 3rd person

iusebiro: am pretty disappointed that @kevinruddpm isn’t even pretending that it’s my beloved KevOhSev tweeting

cinema_monster: do you think @KevinRuddPM is actually the one updating his twitter? i’m kind of getting the image of my dad trying to work the dvd remote…

Digs at Conroy’s profoundly idiotic attempts to censor the Australian internet:

alexrzem: @KevinRuddPM That’s nice that you recorded a message for us. But how do you know that in the future it wouldn’t be blocked by your Firewall?

SilkCharm: @KevinRuddPm Hi Kev, thanks for your video G20 email http://twurl.nl/hon8lp – Please enjoy our #nocleanfeed video http://twurl.nl/06dsl3

Other tweets are disappointed with Kev’s autistic twitter demeanour, particularly in comparison to the more experienced twitterer @TurnbullMalcolm:

Mediamum: Gee, @KevinRuddPM has over 2000 followers and hasn’t had a conversation with anyone yet! FAIL

perkler: @KevinRuddPM just emailed me to say he looked forward to ‘our continuing dialogue’. I didn’t know we were having one. I got the email tho

jedwhite: @TurnbullMalcolm Great to see your genuine engagement through twitter. Very positive contrast to @KevinRuddPM. Hope u r finding useful.

@KevinRuddPM is now Number 8 on the Aussietwit list, yet it seems some followers are dissillusioned.

a_lil_spaz: The novelty has worn off now. Defollowing @KevinRuddPM & others people of political note. Sick of big shots not using Twitter appropriately.

caitabee: @KevinRuddPM I just unfollowed you. Fuck yes.

TWITFLASH!

We have liftoff! @KevinRuddPM is responding – and the cat is cool

Two more tweets have appeared on the newly founded @KevinRuddPM informing us patient followers that he has respectively arrived in Washington and had briefings with the Treasurer and Embassy Staff in preparation for tomorrow’s meeting, and met with Madeline Albright, she of the blithe gaffe that the deaths of half a million Iraqi children through the hideous sanctions over Iraq were “worth it”.

No doubt Ms Albright, presently a top advisor to Obama on national security, would have some pertinent insights into the global stock market schmozzle, given her past position on the NYSE Board. Albright resigned in 2005 after the Grasso scandal.

Considering her past opposition toward recognising the Armenian genocide which occurred during the final days of Ottoman rule in World War 1, the importance of Turkey as one of the trusty US land-bound aircraft carrier vassal countries in the Middle East and the concurring predilections of newly appointed Chief Advisor to Obama, Rahm Emmanuel, along with Obama’s grovelling to AIPAC, it would be surprising indeed if the US shifted its current blinkered, slanted position to the Holocaust suffered by the Armenian people.

Pipped at the post by @TurnbullMalcolm by several weeks, @KevinRuddPM is getting off to an embarrassing, stumbling start. A couple of hours after we first followed Kevvie, all his followers were wiped clean – in a supposedly inexplicable Twitter crash. We readded ourselves quickly, yet were not followed back. In fact, we had to delete then add ourselves again later so Kevvie would follow us, after his Twitter Team announced all followers were to be automatically followed. Democratic governments are the servants of the people, not the other way around, after all.

Unlike Malcolm’s constant, urbane twitterings which are written by none other than the man himself and which include direct, pertinent responses to his followers, Kevin and his Twittering Team have managed just 7 flaccid, dead fish declarations, and no public responses. Twice, his eager followers have been reminded, groan, that Kevvie is off to the G20 in Washington. Has Kevvie no mobile with him on the plane to Washington whereby he could ameliorate his limp Twitter image? Should we infer that he is too busy collecting his thoughts for that great occasion and being a man can only think about one thing at once? With Conroy continuing to make a dill of himself with his unworkable, unpalatable internet censorship proposals, Kevvie is adding insult to injury with his inept handling of the powerful social networking and communication tool Twitter has become – creating the distinct impression Kevvie and his team just don’t understand the internet at all.

Surely his media advisers had studied @BarackObama and @DowningStreet prior to launching into the twitterverse? Get it together Kevvie – why didn’t you set up another identity a while back and practise with your friends to avoid being labelled a Twitter lamer?

The absence of joy and applause from the Opposition (how pleasant it is to write Opposition meaning the Liebs at last) following Kevvie’s very pleasant healing speech of apology to the Stolen Generation was striking.

With manners we have come to expect of ignorance and mean-heartedness, several notable rightwing twits boycotted the event including Wilson Tuckey, Don Randall, Alby Schultz, Dennis Jensen, and Sophie Mirabella.

Questioned in Parliament later over two of Rudd’s staffers turning their backs on Brendan Nelson during his inadequate, typically miserly and patronising speech wherein he attempted vainly to absolve the government from responsibility for the Stolen Generation, Kevvie insisted the staffers apologise. Why apologise for shunning a bigot with a track record like Nelson’s (recall his woeful attempts at improving Aboriginal health when he was Health Minister)? So Kevve can insist on a sorry from everyone – he has a boat to keep afloat.

For the record, we here are sorry … very sorry and look to the day when an apology is extended for the seizing of Australia and the specious imperial Terra Nullius justification. Let the healing begin and we all live with the land sustainably in peace.

Kerry O’Brien’s delightful gaffe that there was ‘a swing to the ABC’ in Bennelong aroused our elated mirth at the woes of the rodent as the eloquent and lovely Maxine McKew looked poised to take his seat. The presence of the Chaser team in the outer election commentary area and prior interview of a non-committal Craig Reucassel had perhaps influenced his thoughts.

For the government under Rudd will be certain to attend to the needs of our ailing dear Aunty, debilitated by the mercantilist, corporate media influenced, wowserish rodent pack. Essential to the health of our similarly diseased democracy, our ABC is headed for better days.

Around the nation as the landslide results became clear, the joy was palpable. We were swilling our third bottle of pink champagne by the time Howard belatedly conceded defeat, advertising as he did so from the podium sticker that he was beholden to Sofitel Wentworth, in probable future Lieberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull’s electorate, for their hospitality to his wake. His farewell speech was lengthy, pompous and whiny, the gluttonous prime miniature scraping the barrel for the limelight he has craved to the detriment of his own party.

A 6% swing against the Lieberals with the loss of 26 seats so far and Howard likely to lose Bennelong mean the wolves will be feasting on dwarf carcass for some time. 88 Labor seats are predicted at this stage. We are pleased that Fringe readers were perspicacious, with 82% polling Team Rodent would lose.

Good riddance, little Johnny, and may you slink away from public life completely, not to reemerge in the form of a vocal statesman like your more admirable counterpart, Malcolm Fraser. And farewell, Costello, always a bridesmaid and never a bride, your career tainted by rodent droppings and a general lack of guts and ambition. We will never forget how you sold off Whorestralia’s gold reserves BEFORE the gold boom, or removed capital gains tax for foreign investors whilst offering no such relief to us locals.

Rudd’s victory address was littered with painful slogans, directed at the average yob who will today be examining their assets and debts in light of more imminent interest rate rises. Yet at least, Whorestralia can now revel in the fact that we can as a nation participate in enlightened ventures like the signing of the Kyoto treaty, removing our soldiers from Bush’s sordid Iraq debacle and repairing the public health and education sectors. All worthy of foregoing tax bribes for!

The restoration of Whorestralian workers’ protections and rights may have to wait till next July, when the Senate will fall to a Labor majority, though we would not be surprised if the some of remnants of the imploded Lieberals turn tail on their former dearly beloved dwarf leader’s draconic industrial policies.

Good luck to you, Kevvie … and keep the light shining. Breathing multiple sighs of relief, we won’t have to leave the country in disgust after all.