Federal Member for Cook and Shadow Minister for Housing & Local Government Scott Morrison debates on Sky News' AM Agenda program.
Vulnerable Tasmanians at risk if Greens’ euthanasia bill passed
26/05 Australian Christian Lobby | The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) today called on Tasmanian parliamentarians to reject the euthanasia bill introduced by Greens’ leader Nick McKim today, saying that the trumpeted safeguards have been shown not to work and, if passed, the legislation would put the lives of vulnerable sick and elderly Tasmanians at risk.
ACL Tasmanian Director Nick Overton said that if Mr McKim’s private member’s bill succeeds the ‘right to die’ could quickly become the ‘duty to die’ under the new culture legalised euthanasia inevitably creates.
“Supposed safeguards for euthanasia legislation don’t work,” Mr Overton said. “The Northern Territory euthanasia legislation enacted in 1996 contained basically the same safeguards as those being promoted by Tasmanian Greens’ leader Nick McKim. However there are significant doubts about whether two of the four people who died under these laws (repealed nine months later) were actually terminally ill. Of the seven people whose deaths were associated with the laws, four were said to have symptoms of depression.
“In Holland where euthanasia has been practiced since the 1990s, 1000 people per year are killed without their consent. The Dutch experience shows that so-called voluntary euthanasia quickly becomes non-voluntary euthanasia.”
Queensland: Child killer must get more than 8 yrs
26/05 Lawrence Springborg MP, LNP | Despite killing a 19 day-old baby boy, Matthew Andrew Riseley will be back on the streets in as little as five years under the Bligh government’s soft sentencing, the State Opposition said today ... "Anyone who kills a child, be it murder or manslaughter, should receive the maximum jail term on the statutes, which is life," he said.
Brisbane Supreme Court heard Matthew Andrew Riseley, 22, of Logan, inflicted horrific head injuries that claimed the baby boy's life at Loganlea on November 10, 2007. The court heard the baby sustained a "constellation" of horrific injuries, including fractures to his skull, ribs and tibia, brain and eye haemorrages and spinal injuries.
"Under Labor’s sentencing laws, which have abandoned victims in favour of violent killers, Riseley received just eight years, but could serve as little five ... which I strongly suggest is totally out of sync with community expectactions.
‘ACL Chief Slams Human Rights Charter Push as Legislating Selfishness
25/05 Australian Christian Lobby | Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) Managing Director Jim Wallace today slammed the campaign for a charter or bill of rights as aiming to legislate selfishness by failing to balance individual rights with community rights.
Speaking at today’s launch in Sydney of the Menzies Research Centre book Don’t Leave us with the Bill: The Case Against an Australian Bill of Rights – in which he is a contributor - Mr Wallace said that overseas experience has shown that charters or bills of rights don’t of themselves benefit human rights but provide a tool for those who want to propel what are essentially selfish agendas above community rights.
“Charters or bills of rights have failed to deliver human rights – even the most basic of rights. Despite a bill of rights the U.S. took over 150 years to deliver African Americans equal rights and as late as this month has still executed prisoners, depriving them of the highest, the most sacred right to life. So essential a fashion accessory to power have they become that even Mr Mugabe has a bill of rights!
Abbott, joins Insiders to discuss the Federal Government's proposed reactivation of the Racial Discrimination Act.
24/05 Australian Christian Lobby | BARRIE CASSIDY, PRESENTER: Now to our program guest and in coming months, the Federal Government will be introducing stage two of the intervention into Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory. And as part of that, in October they will move in the Parliament to reactivate the Racial Discrimination Act. That was suspended by the Howard government in 2007.
TONY ABBOTT: "... I fear Barrie that having seen the introduction of Whitlamism in economic policy, we're now going to see the introduction of Whitlamism in Indigenous policy and that's the last thing that we need.
I fear that the left of the Labor Party has always hated the intervention, only ever supported it through gritted teeth and now we're going to see a concerted attempt to roll it back.
What's all the fuss about?
21/05 Australian Christian Lobby | Australia is one of the freest countries in the world. But freedoms we have taken for granted will be under immediate threat if a national Charter of Rights is introduced.
A Charter of Rights gives tools to those opposed to Christianity to erode our freedoms. For example, within months of the Victorian Charter of Rights being enacted, an inquiry was set up questioning the freedom of Christian schools and organisations to discriminate in favour of staff who shared their Christian ethos.
Who knows what a Federal Charter will unleash.
In other countries, charters or bills of rights have been used to achieve the aims of fringe groups who have failed to win support for their ideas through the normal democratic process.
A Charter of Rights will effectively transfer responsibility for our values on human rights from elected Parliamentarians to unelected judges. In other countries this has had disastrous consequences.
Bob Carr and Jim Wallace to speak at Melbourne charter forum
22/05 Australian Christian Lobby |Former NSW Premier Bob Carr and ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace will address a meeting in Melbourne next week outlining concerns with a Charter of Rights.
They will be joined by the Vice-Chancellor of the Australian Catholic University Professor Greg Craven.
The ACL, the Melbourne Archdiocese of the Catholic Church and the Church & Nation Committee of the Presbyterian Church of Victoria are holding this information session for Christians at the Crossway Centre, Vision Drive, Burwood East, Melbourne on May 27 from 7.30 pm – 9.30 pm.
Please click here for more details
MP's husband fined for bogus election leaflets
19/05 ABC News | ... On November 20 2007, just before the Federal election, Gary Clark was caught by a team of Labor Party operatives handing out bogus leaflets during the campaign for the seat of Lindsay, in Sydney's west.
The fake pamphlet claimed to be from a non-existent group called the Islamic Australia Federation, and praised Labor for supporting the Bali bombers.
Clark pleaded not guilty but was convicted of the offence last month.
Leave for new dads a step still too far
13/05 Essential Baby.com | The Productivity Commission wanted to give fathers two weeks' paid leave with their new babies — but that idea is on the backburner as the Government looks to contain the cost of its 2009-10 budget spending.
The Government has promised to implement a paid parental leave scheme from January 1, 2011, in which mothers earning less than $150,000 will be paid the federal minimum wage of $543.78 a week for 18 weeks.
But in an effort to contain costs of the scheme, both for employers and taxpayers, fathers will miss out on the two weeks' paid leave initially recommended by the Productivity Commission.
‘Charter rights no wrongs’ campaign launch and referendum call
12/05 Australian Christian Lobby | In the face of the current push to soften the ground for an Australian charter of rights, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) will on Thursday launch a campaign which challenges the assumption that this is the best way to protect human rights.
The ‘Charter rights no wrongs’ campaign aims to mobilise tens of thousands of Christians to voice concerns that the proposed charter would do little to benefit human rights but could do much to undermine some of the most basic freedoms Australians take for granted.
The campaign is being promoted to thousands of churches throughout Australia, who will be encouraged to have their members sign a petition asking that elected representatives – rather than unelected judges – remain responsible for human rights. With the aid of a special campaign website, Christians will also be asked to put in a submission to the National Human Rights Consultation.
Rudd defends need to break promises
13/05 SMH | Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has defended breaking election promises in the budget, saying the global recession had forced the Government to take the action.
The Government backtracked on issues such as the private health insurance rebate, which will now be means tested, but Mr Rudd would not apologise.
... "My ultimate responsibility is to supply the soundness of public finance for this country into the future while dealing with the reality of this global recession." Mr Rudd also challenged the Opposition to support the budget.
Doubts cast on recovery scenario
13/05 SMH.com.au | Economists have cast doubts over the Federal Government's budget projections showing a robust recovery in Australian growth by 2011.Treasurer Wayne Swan last night said he expects gross domestic product growth to bounce back to 4.5% by 2011-12, just two years after what is shaping up as the worst recession to hit Australia in decades, with predictions of GDP shrinking by 0.5% in the next financial year.
Swan didn't dare mention the deficit, Turnbull says
13/05 SMH.com.au | Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull says Treasurer Wayne Swan ignored the elephant in the room, during his budget speech on Tuesday night. "The deficit was so horrible that the treasurer couldn't even bring himself to mention it in his speech," Mr Turnbull told Fairfax Radio Network.
"This is the first time in history a treasurer has given a budget night speech and has not mentioned, has not had the guts to say, what the result of the budget is. "He wasn't prepared to say that it was $58 billion in deficit, he wasn't prepared to say that the debt by 2012 would be $188 billion."
Universities, students win as Canberra commits billions
13/05 SMH.com.au | YOUTH allowances will be aimed towards students who need it most, and cash-strapped universities will get a much-needed boost for research and infrastructure, in an education budget designed to stop the tertiary system falling behind.
The Government will spend billions of dollars over the next four years implementing key recommendations from its recent review of higher education.
Peter Costello on 2009-10 Federal Budget
13/05 SMH.com.au | Interview with Karen Tso, Squawk Australia, CNBC
KAREN TSO: Mr Costello you have had your Budgets dissected, praised and attacked in the past and in fact more recently. Give us your report card on the Government's Budget.
MR COSTELLO: I think it is a very confused document actually. On the one hand the Government is trying to say we are in the midst of this enormous financial and economic downturn but they predict a very moderate recession and a very strong recovery. On the one hand they wanted to tell us that they were going to be cutting back on expenditures to try and get the Budget back into balance and yet the theme of the Budget was more fiscal stimulation. This is a bipolar Budget - different messages at the same time. And because of that I think it doesn't hit the mark. The one thing I think we can say about this Budget is whatever the forecasts are, the reality is not going to be as predicted, and the important thing I think is to look at what's being done in the early years because there's no promise at all that any of these projections over four, five or six years will be remotely like what happens.
A review of Islam: Human Rights and Public Policy. Edited by David Claydon.
Bill Muehlenberg | ... government attempts to promote and understand Islam are often really pushing the radical Islamist agenda. For example, Griffith University’s Islamic Centre has “links with the International Institute of Islamic Thought based in Malaysia, which is currently under investigation in the United States for funding terrorism”.
He also notes that Australian taxpayers have been “funding madrasas [Koranic schools] in Indonesia to the tune of many millions of dollars” through overseas aid programs. Says Stenhouse, this “should be ringing alarm bells in government and security circles”.
Peter Day looks at how misguided and naive Australian government attempts to educate people about Islam in fact simply become the channel for Islamic propaganda. For example, in 2004 the Federal Government produced a glossy booklet on Islam entitled Muslim Australians.
It was designed to teach Australians that Muslim are just like us, and that Islam is a peaceful religion, allowing full freedom of religion. The author of the booklet was Abdullah Saeed. But as Day informs us, Saeed penned another book in 2004, which did not get a mention in the glossy government publication.
That book was called Freedom of Religion, Apostasy and Islam, and it paints a very different picture from that found in the tax-payer funded booklet. In it Saeed admits that death for apostasy is clear Islamic teaching. Anyone who dares to convert out of Islam is regarded as an apostate, and death is the just punishment for this.
Paid Maternity leave?
11/05 Peter Stokes, Saltshakers |We at Salt Shakers always like to give credit where it is due, so congratulations must go to the Rudd government for their sleight of hand over Paid Maternity Leave.
The government gives 18 weeks paid leave ($9,774 - $543 x 18 weeks) with one hand and takes away $5,000 ('Baby Bonus) with the other. Thus they are really only giving 9 weeks paid leave.
Those employees, of companies like BHP, who currently get employer-paid maternity leave + the baby bonus will also now lose out on the baby bonus.
On the other hand they should also be congratulated for giving stay at home mums more than working mums.
A full time parent will continue to get the 'Baby Bonus and the Family Tax Benefit Part B' which is estimated to be $12,000.
There was a rumour that a paid maternity scheme would not be announced in this budget and the government received a lot of flak for that - so now they've announced a scheme that will not start until 2011.
Public IVF funding in line for Budget cut
07/05 AAP | THE Rudd Government has done little to quell Budget speculation it may limit infertile women's access to publicly-funded IVF. The Government's razor gang has also reportedly got the $3.5 billion, 30 per cent private health insurance rebate in its sights.
Before the last election, Labor promised to maintain the $319 million Medicare Safety Net, which helps 1.5 million sick and pregnant people with medical bills.
Labor's gung-ho plan ideal for defence
07/05 Greg Sheridan, Foreign Editor, The Australian | IT may be a minority judgment just now, but if Joel Fitzgibbon achieves three-quarters of what he wants to do, he will be one of the most significant defence ministers Australia has had.
The weekend's defence white paper is really two documents in one. One is typical bureaucratese, that is to say, close to nonsense. That is the narrative surrounding the defence policy. This is a dog's breakfast, as most such documents are. And yet, as a seasoned, one might say jaundiced, observer of these documents over many years, I have to pay even this part of the white paper its due. It achieves its objectives.
Let me give you an example. Overall, the white paper is very bullish on the US alliance. It embraces it and declares it vital to our security. It repeatedly states the obvious: that the US will retain vast defence superiority in the Asia-Pacific up to and beyond 2030. All sensible and true. However, the white paper also contains this rather weird passage: "The Government specifically considered the issue of whether effective maintenance of our alliance with the US might to some extent depend on Australia's readiness and capacity to join coalitions to fight alongside US forces in distant theatres." It then comments: "We must never put ourselves in a position where the price of our own security is a requirement to put Australian troops at risk in distant theatres of war where we have no direct interests at stake."
This is truly one of the most gormless and nonsensical paragraphs I have read in any government document. Who, pray tell, has ever suggested that the survival of the US alliance depends on our joining every US-led coalition? The only US allies who joined the initial combat operations in Iraq were Britain, Poland and Australia, yet the US did not as a result break its alliance with anybody.
‘VIC Parliamentary report threatens Christian schools
07/05 Australian Christian Lobby | Limiting the freedom of Christian schools and church organisations to discriminate in favour of staff who share their values has been canvassed in a report tabled in the Victorian Parliament late this afternoon.
The Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations (SARC) Options Paper that reviews the Exceptions and Exemptions in the Equal Opportunity Act suggests changes to the long-standing and essential exceptions contained in the Act which guarrantee freedom of religion.
While the report lists options, some of these, if adopted would have serious repercussions for churches, church schools or any church related organisation.
As the options paper has just been released, a full review is not yet complete but ACL will provide further information shortly.
The SARC is inviting further submissions until July 10. Removal or further restriction of these already limited protections threatens to impact severely on the freedoms we rely on to run Christian organisations, schools and even churches in accordance with our values and faith.
The SARC review was commissioned within months of the enacting of the Victorian Charter of Rights, further highlighting the danger to Christian freedoms if a Federal Charter is introduced.
Rudd delays emissions trading
04/05 The Age | The introduction of the Federal Government's emissions trading scheme (ETS) has been delayed by one year to mid-2011.
The government had planned to introduce the ETS in July 2010, despite opposition from business, green groups and the coalition.
Communities Threatened By Criminal Name Change Loophole
03/04 Senator Steve Fielding, Family First | Criminals who exploit a loophole that allows them to change their name by deed poll and leave their criminal history behind threaten the safety of our communities and must be stopped, Family First Leader, Senator Steve Fielding said today.
Its time there was uniform legislation to ensure that criminals cannot hide behind a name change that makes a mockery of criminal history checks, Senator Fielding said.
Its frustrating for police trying to track criminal activity and for employers who unknowingly could be employing people with extensive criminal histories who have used the law to hide their crimes.
WHITE PAPER 2009: Defending Australia in the Asia Pacific Century: Force 2030
Ministers Preface | There is no greater responsibility for a national government than the defence of the nation, its people and their interests. Successfully meeting that obligation requires sound long-term planning, guided by regular and thoughtful assessments of the country’s strategic outlook and potential threats to our sovereign interests.
The last Defence White Paper was developed a decade ago yet the world has changed significantly over that period of time. The decade brought the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001 in the United States and subsequent events in London, Madrid, Bali, Jakarta and more recently, Mumbai.
Over the same period wars raged in Iraq and Afghanistan and fragility in Pacific Island countries grew more apparent. The nuclear ambitions of North Korea and Iran focused our minds, as did the prospect of weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of non-state actors. Cyber warfare has emerged as a serious threat to critical infrastructure, piracy has re-emerged as a threat to maritime security and space is being used by more nations for strategic purposes. But the biggest changes to our outlook over the period have been the rise of China, the emergence of India and the beginning of the end of the so-called unipolar moment; the almost two-decade-long period in which the pre-eminence of our principal ally, the United States, was without question.
Link to the Full PDF on the Defence Department Website -
Pollie Pedal was started in 1998 by Tony Abbott and other politicians as a way to raise money for various charities. It also provides opportunities for politicians to meet and exchange views and ideas with various communities and local organisations.
A number of Federal Parliamentarians, from both sides of politics will join in the ride as well as local mayors, sportspeople and members of local communities
Pollie Pedal 2009 will begin in Brisbane on the 26th April 2009 and finish at the University of Sydney on the 5th May 2009.
The twelfth Pollie Pedal will begin in Brisbane and pass through Yatala, Brunswick Heads, Grafton, Dorrigo, Armidale, Walcha, Gloucester, Cessnock and Brooklyn before finishing at Sydney University on May 5th.
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Queensland: Child killer must get more than 8 yrs
Rudd defends need to break promises
Swan didn't dare mention the deficit, Turnbull says
A review of Islam: Human Rights and Public Policy. Edited by David Claydon. 
Communities Threatened By Criminal Name Change Loophole 
