Let’s get down to business.

posted by Paul Roberton on Thursday, February 25th 2010

We have  a New Members Night coming up but we’re not calling it a New Members Night because it’s for all members.
It’s a great night to get out and catch up over a cuppa.  It’s a night to rub shoulders with a few familiar souls.  Have you ever thought about the impact your presence can have at such an event?
Shortly after I joined the party a little under a year ago, David Collyer invited me out for a coffee. We talked for hours. He then invited me to a New Members Night. When I turned up at Bell’s Hotel last June, the first person I saw was David.
It made such a difference to the way I approached my first party function.
For those of us who aren’t candidates but support the ideals that we embrace, perhaps the single most important thing we can do is to be a friendly face for a new member.
Your presence could make a huge difference. Your encouragement or inspiration might entice a new member to leap out of their comfort zone. Your support for a member might lead to their standing in the forthcoming election or for one of the other many roles that need to be filled this year.
My father was a Natio in the Vietnam war.  He wasn’t a solider though – he was a surgeon.  For every soldier in the jungle there were  ten people behind the scenes,  just like him, supporting each Digger.
While I’d never compare politics to war, the analogy fits. Coming to a New Members Night and showing your commitment to the party is like standing behind a candidate or office bearer and giving them your support.
So stop for a moment.
Imagine a warm room, of old friends and the fragrance of after dinner coffee.
Feel the buzz of conversation.  Feel the firm handshakes, and strain to hear your conversation over the one next to you. Feel the energy.
Imagine the effect that will have on the newly committed Democrats,  nervously finding their way.
See you at 7:00.
Friday March 19th
Bells Hotel
Cnr Coventry and Moray Streets,
South Melbourne.
RSVP
Robin Davis (9752 – 6466) or (rbd<AT>knox.hotkey.net.au) or
Paul Roberton (0421 74 84 55) or paul<AT>paulroberton.com “

Rudd Abbott Wars – Episode XVVVV – Religion And The Education System Strikes Out?

posted by Paul Roberton on Friday, January 1st 2010

I am a teacher and was a practicing Anglican for many years.

I have taught in some very different schools, where a range of religious teachings are followed.
In Victoria, Religious Education is taught sensibly and sensitively. In primary schools it’s usually optional and non denominational.
In secondary schools the two main religious subjects offered to VCE (Year 11 & 12) students are Religion & Society and Text & Traditions.
They lend themselves well to a personal reflection on religion, comparative theology and the impact of religion on society.

There is a wide expanse of territory for study. Within Text and Traditions there are four recommended texts: Ezekial, the Gospels of Luke and John, and the Qu’ran.

Students may choose to study one of the four texts in isolation before comparing with others.
It has never been an issue.

Let’s be clear though, what I’m referring to are electives for senior students. Students, one would hope, who have a grasp of their own beliefs and some functional critical thinking.

We know religious beliefs are  deeply held and highly personal. Most of us let it sit quietly; some choose to evangelize.
Some go to war in it’s name, but it still extends the promise of a healthier, more tolerant community.

I find it ironic Mr Rudd  and Mr Abbott, two Christian politicians, are prepared to dance around each other on an issue that could actually bring them – all of us – together.

They could agree that universal messages of tolerance, compassion and forgiveness in senior classrooms are a good thing, or they could agree to both stay out of the debate.

They could agree diversity of faith makes us stronger and philosophical debate makes us wiser.

Instead, they’re eyeing each other off like feather-weight boxers, twitching and flinching each time the other makes a move.

Prime Minister Rudd used a back bencher, Senator Landy to question the merit of the Bible in the new National Curriculum. Opposition Leader Abbott immediately weighed in.

This threatens to degenerate into a circus.

We must send a clear message: We resent the exploitation of religious belief for political gain. It cheapens politics and demeans our beliefs.

If religion is to become nothing but a lever for politicians to pull,  we may have to pretend we’re all Jedi so they leave the matter alone.

May the Force be with you.

Paul Roberton

Your Civil Rights overruled by Police Convenience: Strip-Searching your ‘Designated Areas’ at Will and without Consequence.

posted by Paul Roberton on Thursday, December 17th 2009

Big Brother 2.0 ?

The amendments to the Summary Offences & Control of Weapons Act that enable police to strip-search citizens at will are deeply disturbing.

I share the deep repugnance of YACVIC, the Youth Affairs Council of Victoria, at the Brumby Labor Government’s bill. They are aghast and rightly so.

The legislation empowers police to search at will or ‘move on’ individuals who are likely to breach the peace or endanger the safety of others who haven’t otherwise desisted from an illegal act.

Can any of us take our freedoms so for granted that we let this slip idly by?

It’s one thing to give police proper authority to act and to trust their professionalism and training. They are magnificent at their job, but they remain police – not psychics.

Let’s be fair. We don’t want to impede their essential work, but a millennium of the Common Law is being overturned here:  surely they should form a reasonable suspicion first. This bill would no longer require it.

Should they really be empowered to stop someone, perhaps even a child, before they’ve formed a considered opinion of a person’s intent? The echoes of Police Union boss Greg Davies have scarcely faded on the presumption of guilt.

Before us is a Bill empowering police to search any individual – including children, for the legislation lists no age limit to these search powers.

What’s even more ghastly is that the state government sheepishly concedes the bill flies in the face of its own Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities”.

Well done to YACVIC for bringing our attention to this insidious weakening of our hard-earned civil rights, and shame on the government for its hypocrisy.

The YACVIC position can be viewed here.

Senate Rejects ETS – Would The Democrats Have Improved and Passed this Law?

posted by Scott Kane on Wednesday, December 2nd 2009

The dogs have been barking for some time – the Senate has now rejected the Rudd government ETS legislation.  This sets in place, should the Rudd government choose to take it, a double dissolution trigger.  Rudd can call a general election for the House of Representatives and all the Senate.  Pundits are calling this for early March, others for August.  In reality, it could be just six weeks away.

Liberal senators Sue Boyce and Judith Troeth voted with the government,  but this support was far short of a Senate majority.  The Mad Monk Tony Abbott, practicing as he does the “withdrawal method” when it comes to all things not conservative, forced the rest of the Liberals to vote NO despite minister Wong’s previous efforts to negotiate the bill’s passage.

The Greens voted NO – as is their custom on every piece of legislation before the house and the rest on the cross benches followed suit. Their eternal purity makes them politically irrelevant and a parliamentary menace.  But politics isn’t about holiness, it is about securing the best possible outcomes, something the Democrats never, never forgot.

But what would the Democrats have done?

The ETS is not an ideal piece of legislation.  The Democrats would have negotiated for improvements in line with our own policies.  Fairer more equitable solutions, while not appealing to major polluters,  would reduce the impact any climate change mitigation legislation would have on the overall economy and on the poor.  Our view differs from The Greens’ “Put the oxy torch to all industries emitting a kilogram of CO2, dude!” economic vandalism.

We would have worked, as we always have, with the elected government to secure the best deal possible for the Australian people with a bill that, while limited, is  a step forward.  A step the Rudd government, despite having a fresh and clear mandate for it, will not now take.

That was role of the  Democrat for 30 years in the Senate – negotiating.   Ensuring the elected government functions, keeps its word and doesn’t cave in to sectional interests.  That we are needed to do this line-by-line work is demonstrated by the failure of the ETS.  A serious piece of legislation about a serious subject, one that ensures Australia’s future – from economy to environment –  has been flagrantly reduced to petty party-based squabbling.  John Howard must be laughing behind his hand as he eggs on the newly-anointed High Priest of Climate Denial – Tony Abbott.

Bob Brown is likewise congratulating the troops on a job well screwed with the rest of the cross benches looking for a pat on the head – from somebody or anybody!

Well done all!  You’ve succeeded in reducing our federal Parliament to a circus.  A national joke; a joke on the heads of the Australian people.  Thanks a bunch!

I urge those entitled to vote in the Higgins by-election to send a message to Canberra.  Use your ballot paper and the preferential system to its fullest.  Vote 1 Australian Democrats – David Collyer, and if you’re a Liberal voter and feel so compelled then (and only then) send your second preference to those who have failed you: the Liberal Party of Australia.

Scott Kane

Abbott writes ‘Kick Here’ on the Liberal rump. The ALP and Voters will take him at his word

posted by David Collyer on Tuesday, December 1st 2009

In making Tony Abbott their leader, the Liberal Party have declared themselves unelectable and destroyed their future.

Tony Abbott is an intelligent and articulate man.  But the hard-line Catholic conservative beliefs he articulates are poison to middle Australia – where governments are made and lost.

Were he to become Prime Minister, our country would be a centre of commerce, not a civilization.  He would enact a huge increase in economic inequality:

• Further tax cuts for high earners while ‘bracket creep’ raises taxes on middle incomes
• Major cuts to social security that help the poorest and weakest
• The emasculation of trade unions – a la Work Choices
• A counter-revolution in education where opportunity at all levels must be bought

In the dark days at the end of World War Two, Robert Menzies dusted off the famous essay ‘The Forgotten Man’ by William Graham Sumner (1840-1910)[1] and declared himself the champion of middle Australia.

His rationale was the workers were protected by the union movement and the wealthy could bloody well look after themselves.  His ‘Forgotten Man’ speeches galvanized the country after the suffering of war and put the Liberal Party in power for an entire generation.

By current standards, Menzies sounds like a conservative though he wasn’t – he was a liberal who oversaw the greatest lift in living standards in our history.  He embraced the economics of John Maynard Keynes and the small ‘L’ liberal credo that recognized government must do what individuals and business cannot do themselves, and that some activities, notably education, are too important to be decided solely by market prices.

The Liberal Party’s core constituents are business leaders and blue-collar conservatives, whose tenuous existence makes them fear change. Menzies used his stature to stare down their insistent demands for monopoly rights and social repression and instead provided the measured progress middle Australia requires of government.

The Emissions Trading Scheme that destroyed the Liberal leadership requires both these groups to change by  pricing carbon emissions.  For business this introduces an era of creative destruction as we replace our industrial kit with less damaging alternatives.  And blue-collar conservatives see only hard-to-evade costs, for benefits they cannot see, imagine or touch.

Malcolm Turnbull was leading his party down this path of measured progress.  Instead, they have plotted a different course and consigned themselves to oblivion.

The ALP will delightedly invite voters to kick the Liberal rump.  And we will.

David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,

Four Wheels Good; Two Wheels Bad – Police Association demonizes motorcycles, bikie gangs and minorites

posted by David Collyer on Thursday, November 26th 2009

The Australian Democrats condemn in the strongest possible terms agitation by the police officers trade union for new Victorian laws that criminalize motorcycle riders.  Such laws would breach many of the fundamental civil liberties enjoyed by all, oppress an innocent minority and foster a culture of intolerance.

“We want none of this,” the Democrats Higgins by-election candidate David Collyer said today.

“Motorcyclists are entitled to equal treatment under the law in all circumstances. They may be scruffy, and people may be affronted when bikes noisily zoom past their cars, but this does not make them criminals.

“Tyrannizing a minority will not make the majority safer; it merely opens a window for further discrimination and is an incitement to violence – both official and civil.

“And since when do trade unions get to re-write our criminal law?  Police Association Secretary Greg Davies would be well advised to focus on the pay and conditions of his members, not in trying to overturn a thousand years weighty precedents by appealing to people’s thoughtless instincts.

“It may be superficially attractive to call for ‘strong laws’ – whatever that might mean – but it does nothing to advance us as a civilization and as a community.

“There are criminals in the bikie groups, this is known.  But that does not give license to condemn all group members, and by implication all motorcycle riders.

Victoria’s Chief Police Commissioner Simon Overland is quoted today saying the state’s organised crime laws are tough enough to deal with any criminal gangs that try to operate here.  Equally, there have been no calls for legal changes from the judiciary.

“If the Police Commissioner is satisfied, and our Judges are content with their tools, that ought be the end of the matter.

“If citizens have any doubts about the Democrats’ unflinching stance on this matter, just substitute ‘Jew’ or ‘Arab’ or ‘Hippy’ where you see ‘Bikie Gang’ in a sentence.  The intolerance and bigotry on display will quickly become clear.

“I know this is a state issue and that I am a candidate for federal office but nonsense like this has to be resisted in all forums, at all times and with great energy.

“This is a matter of the highest principle,” Collyer concluded.

Media contact – David Collyer 0413 248 193

David Collyer is currently contesting the Higgins by election for the Australian Democrats against Clive Hamilton for The Greens and Kelly O’Dwyer for the Liberal Party,