Politics

ABBOTT’S SELF INFLICTED ‘SHIRTFRONT’

If you need to pinpoint a moment when Tony Abbott squandered his goodwill it was six months ago when he ‘squibbed’ the chance to remove 18c from the Racial Discrimination Act, often referred to as the Righteous Dills Act.

This draconian piece of nonsense, so beloved by Leftist ideologues whose definition of free speech is the right to say whatever they believe in, ad nauseum, but to hell with anyone else’s right to disagree, was ripe for removing.

A ‘law’ that seeks to gag people because others may be offended, insulted or humiliated has no place in a modern democracy. Why? Because in a democracy you should have the right to offend, otherwise you are not living in a democracy.

What is the alternative? To all join hands, sing kumbaya and agree with everyone on everything? Madness!

Any sane person is not going to deliberately insult another person, or group, but nor should they be dragged before some star chamber for expressing opinions that may be unpalatable to some. That belongs to the era of the Inquisition, not modern Australia.

The PM had a chance to use the ‘bully pulpit’ in a manner that would have eradicated this judicial bullying of individuals, like journalist Andrew Bolt. Middle Australia was ripe, and ready, to support him.

Instead Abbott thought it was all too hard. Easier to watch that ball go through to the keeper than risk playing a shot!

Abbott’s reasoning was shallow. Since when was restoring freedom of speech a “needless complication” in forging national unity Australia?

As David Kemp, a former cabinet minister in the Howard Government, said, “to suggest that national unity requires a legal prohibition on offending certain select groups is unbelievable and demeaning to all.”

Abbott’s move, in August last year, to ‘reach out to Muslims,’ yielded him little from that quarter but what it told middle Australia was their views and opinions, was of lesser importance to placating Muslim opinion.

In essence Abbott did not have the guts to take on the ‘lamestream’ media, and pressure groups, to ensure that freedom of speech was sacrosanct and not just the preserve of the Tony Jones Q&A set and strident minorities.

Abbott will probably survive until the next election unless he continues in his current ham-fisted manner and learns nothing. He has offended his base and he needs to work on wooing back people with traditional values, and morals, who are fed up with being denigrated for such opinions.

Interfering with Medicare payments, a battle fought and won by Gough Whitlam long ago, and proposing outlandish parental paid leave schemes is not the way.

As for his chief rivals: Malcolm Turnbull is not acceptable to the conservatives in the Liberal Party, being hardly different from Labor on many issues, and Julie Bishop is a lightweight who was a flop as shadow Treasurer, in Opposition, and is overrated as foreign minister.

In October last year it was a battle between her and Richard Marles, the ALP spokesman on Immigration and Border Protection, as to who was the more ridiculous.

Scott Morrison, having showed what a truly determined minister could achieve in that portfolio, forced Marles, (after thrashing him umpteen times in the House), to come out with a statement that a future Labor Government might have a turn-back- the- boats policy but only if the Indonesians approved of it!

Well that certainly won the Doc Evatt Award for Madness.

 (As Opposition Leader in 1955 Dr Evatt assured the House there were no Russian spies in Australia because he had written to Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov and had been assured by the Russian minister of this ‘fact.’

The same Molotov, on 23 August 1939, had engaged in secret protocols with Nazi foreign minister Joachim Ribbentrop to carve up Poland in the event of war –and that came eight days later. Molotov’s form meant he was hardly a man to be trusted).

However, even this qualified statement by Marles was too much for Bill Shorten who slapped his shadow minister down for such a comment. The thought of Stabber Bill as PM is terrifying.

At the same time that Labor was doing the cultural cringe, Bishop was denying that the Armenian genocide ever took place. Just how over 1.5 million Armenians disappeared during the Great War era is only unclear to her.

For anyone else the history lessons have been crystal clear with the Christian Armenians, in the Ottoman Empire, declining from around two million to 388,000 between 1915 (starting the day before the Anzac Day landings), and 1922 because of the Turkish Government’s genocidal policies.

But of course we must not offend Turkey-so no one mention the war. Better to have our foreign minister sound like a turkey!

So it goes on and, in our own time, every daily horrible murderous act we read about is called ‘un-Islamic’ by people who frankly do know better but who are afraid to tell truth. This savagery is truly representative of the 1400 year history of Islam.

The few brave political souls who try to stand up against the politically correct nonsense, like Senator Cory Bernardi (Liberal SA), do so at the risk of losing the chance of a ministerial career and being derided by the PC media.

Indeed, Winston Churchill spent the 1930s on a backbench, until the outbreak of World War 2, because he was derided as an out of touch sabre-rattler in his constant warnings against the Nazis.

Unfortunately, on both sides of politics in Australia today, the new appeasers hold sway.