27/11 Peter van Onselen, The Australian | MALCOLM Turnbull has dug his heels in - true to form with the way he has conducted himself throughout his life.
Whether we are talking about his time as a lawyer taking on the British government in the Spycatcher case or his efforts in the seat of Wentworth when fighting for Liberal preselection, Turnbull isn't afraid of a fight.
He showed that again last night.
Turnbull's political opponents were quick to cast him as mad after his news conference last night, like the black knight in the Monty Python movie, fighting on despite losing arms and legs, claiming they were only flesh wounds. One senior Liberal described him as like "Hitler in the Berlin bunker, moving troops around that no longer exist".
NATION HELD HOSTAGE TO ETS
27/11 Tony Abbott, The Australian |I WOULD prefer that Malcolm Turnbull did not give up the leadership of the Liberal Party but I would like him to change his mind about the government's emissions trading legislation; not necessarily to reconsider the merits of an emissions trading scheme but not to rush one through the parliament just so Kevin Rudd can look good at Copenhagen.
The long-term interests of the country should not be hostage to someone's ego or, indeed, to pride in an opinion that once made sense but has been overtaken by events. At the close of Tuesday night's party meeting it was proposed that the Coalition accept the government's amendments but refer the amended bill to a Senate committee so it could be fully scrutinised and voted on in February after the Copenhagen conference.
This compromise wasn't acceptable to the party leader and the meeting broke up with people shouting at each other.
If not reconsidered, this will give the Prime Minister a huge political victory at the cost of fracturing the Coalition, dividing the Liberal Party and saddling the country with an ill-considered and probably futile new tax
This train wreck was predicted and could still be avoided but, in the meantime, I can't serve on the Opposition front bench. It's the leader's policy, not his leadership, that's the issue; if it were otherwise, I could hardly have taken such a role in defending him during the past six months.
Rudd facing naked truth
Andrew Bolt, Columnist for the Herald Sun | JUST look at this astonishing farce in Canberra, is what I should have said.
You see, I was talking to a class of year 11 students this week and found - to my horror - that few of that Harry Potter generation had even heard of the children's story that best explains this madness.
You know, the madness of Kevin Rudd's colossal tax on everything, which couldn't stop global warming even if that warming were real. I mean, too, the madness of the Liberals' collapse under Malcolm Turnbull, and the startling rise of Kevin Andrews, the man they said was crazy.
Anyway, there I was in this classroom, talking of daring to speak the truth. Who, I asked, knew Hans Christian Andersen's tale of The Emperor's New Clothes?Not one hand went up. How we've failed today's children.
Malcolm Turnbull says he'll stand against Liberal leadership foes
27/11 Perth Now | MALCOLM Turnbull has told his lieutenants he will not stand down - and the looming leadership contest could force MPs to choose between him and Tony Abbott.
While Turnbull supporters say the "Plan B" is a unity ticket involving Joe Hockey and Peter Dutton, Mr Hockey has indicated to supporters he does not want to challenge the leader and will put his name forward only if he stands aside.
But a defiant Mr Turnbull is determined to pass the Government's emissions trading scheme legislation and honour his agreement with Labor.
Refusing to go quietly, Mr Turnbull is challenging the party to blast him out.
Joe Hockey being lined up to lead Liberals
27/11 The Australian | JOE Hockey would emerge as leader of the Liberal Party, with Peter Dutton as his deputy, under a plan being worked out in the upper echelons of the party.
The two sticking points the Liberals are seeking to resolve is finding a way for Malcolm Turnbull to accept the arrangement and bow out gracefully, and ensure that West Australians don’t rebel at the demotion of deputy leader Julie Bishop
Malcolm Turnbull felled by grassroots revolt
27/11 Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor, The Australian | MALCOLM Turnbull's leadership has been destroyed in a spectacular and unprecedented fashion.
For the first time, a grassroots revolt by local Liberal branches and members has brought down the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party.
... His declaration last night that "nothing has changed" denied reality and his vow that the Rudd government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme must pass as a matter of honour denied the belief among his colleagues that he had fudged the majority support in the partyroom.
And his passionate defence of the Rudd government ETS and the adoption of the arguments that the Liberals cannot be climate change deniers only further angered his ETS opponents yesterday.
Seeing through the hoax of the century
Janet Albrechtsen | INCREASINGLY, the road to Copenhagen resembles a suburban street on Halloween with the number of climate change freak shows and stunts reaching a nadir in recent weeks. Nicholas Stern says we should turn vegetarian in order to combat climate change. If you must eat meat, eat kangaroos, says Ross Garnaut, because marsupials emit negligible amounts of methane. And that champagne you drank on Melbourne Cup day? Scientists scolded us with a report that a 750ml bottle of bubbly could produce 100 million bubbles, releasing five litres of carbon dioxide.
Yet far from rallying people to the cause of immediate action on climate change, every new cri de coeur may be turning people away. Could it be that those derided as the great unwashed are beginning to ask more questions than their smart political leaders or the bastions of intellectual curiosity in the media?
... Despite the headline grabbing rhetoric about climate change calamity, recent polls reveal that more and more people appear to be challenging the orthodoxy. The most recent Lowy Institute poll found that while 48 per cent of Australian believe that global warming is a serious and pressing problem, the numbers are down 12 points since 2008 and 20 points down since 2006. “This is also the first year that it has not had majority support,” said the Lowy Institute.
A poll by Ipso Reid in Canada in September found that global warming has dropped down the list of people’s concerns. Indeed, a full 41 per cent now say the threat has been overblown. In the US, Associated Press reported on a poll last month that found 57 per cent of people believe there is clear evidence that the world is heating up, down 20 points from three years ago. These are some trend lines worth watching.
Perhaps we are wising up to modern day millenarianism where end-of-the-world cults - those who have the most to gain from their fear mongering - preach calamity. Remember Y2K? The cult back then comprised computer experts. They predicted disaster. Planes would fall from the skies. People would be caught in halting elevators. Chaos would descend on anything that relied on a computer, from financial markets to utilities. Governments duly prepared for disaster with the BBC reporting that global preparations for the millennium bug were estimated to have cost more than $US300 billion. All for nought. Nothing happened. It was, as James Taranto wrote in The Wall Street Journal, the hoax of the century.
Tripped up by Rudd's rules
27/11 Dennis Shanahan, Political Editor, The Australian |THE Liberal Party is in a shambolic and untenable political position because of its strategic failure to craft a policy on action against climate change that was not dictated by Kevin Rudd. The Prime Minister has masterfully set the rules for the climate change debate, cornered the Coalition on an emissions trading scheme and co-opted Malcolm Turnbull.
Rudd has left the Coalition with nowhere to go, divided and at complete odds with its grassroots. The Liberal leadership has been left on the beach with a Labor scheme while the tide of popular opinion and Liberal Party sentiment has started to ebb away from that scheme.
Rudd's entire success is built on creating a nexus between climate change and his ETS, the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme. He equates action on climate change with his ETS and characterises opposition to his scheme as "climate change denial".
The Coalition's failure is built on its acceptance of Rudd's rules of debate and policy-making. The Liberals have never attempted to differentiate between action on climate change and Rudd's ETS
THE AUSTRALIAN PEACEFUL ASYLUM INVASION
26/11 Tony Abbott |Prime Minister Rudd said this week that the Government’s policy towards boat people was both “hardline and humane”. His difficulty is that it’s next-to-impossible to be hardline and humane at the same time. A hardline policy will seem inhumane to refugee advocates. A humane policy will seem like a welcome mat to people smugglers and their clients.
There’s no doubt that the Rudd Government has watered down John Howard’s border protection policies. In particular, it has replaced temporary protection visas with permanent residency; provided people on offshore islands with additional appeal mechanisms; and stopped sending would-be arrivals to places such as Nauru and PNG. Last year, the Government wanted to stress how different it was from its despised predecessor. The message might have been intended for voters in inner city electorates but it was also picked up by people in troubled third world countries. With boat people arrivals ten times greater than in 2007, Mr Rudd now wants to stress how tough the Government will be. Unfortunately for him and for the integrity of Australia’s borders, desperate people are more interested in the Government’s actions than its words. . ....."
ACT wins fight on gay wedding laws
26/11 The Daily | THE ACT government has triumphed over its federal counterpart on new laws allowing gay couples to wed. The federal government had threatened to quash the legislation after it was passed by the ACT Legislative Assembly earlier this month.
But after discussions between the two, the ACT government appears to have won the battle and will retain the laws - albeit with some slight tweaking. Same-sex partners will now have to register their intention to hold a wedding.
South Australian Senator, Cori Bernardi has organised this Petition against the signing of the Copenhagen Climate Treaty -
Please click on the image link to sign it also let your friends know about it.
More articles and links regarding this treaty can be found further down this page.
UK: Britain delivers lesson in dangers of freedom lost
Paul Diamond, The Australian |I HAVE seen the future and it doesn't work. The debate in Australia over a charter of rights is similar
to the debate in 1998 in Britain.
We were told that we were the only country in the world without a constitution or bill of rights, that we had nothing to fear as the European Convention protected freedom of religion and we were exaggerating the detrimental impact.
At the time, I was instructed as a barrister to assist Baroness Young to draft an amendment to the Human Rights Act that became Section 13 of the act (heightened protection to religious organisations) and it didn't take long for British courts to ignore it.
There was an uncertainty at the time: How can human rights be bad? Who wants torture? But I know now that we were correct to resist
the act. The Human Rights Act (or the Charter of Rights) has contributed to some of the most significant reversals in freedoms in Britain. We are considerably less free in 2009 than we were in 1998. I am sure you can remember that we had no freedom of speech or religion in Britain before 1998! This is because of the hostility of the Human Rights Act to Judeo Christian values. It grants liberal toleration to tolerant liberals only. It is also because of the expanding use of anti-discrimination laws and the use of hate-speech laws to silence messages that are disapproved of.
Kevin Rudd's $7b UN wrangle
Andrew Bolt | NEXT month Kevin Rudd flies to Copenhagen to help seal a United Nations deal to cut the world's emissions - and to make Australia hand over part of its wealth
So keen is the Prime Minister to get this new global-warming treaty signed that he's been appointed a "friend of the chairman" to tie up loose ends.
So here's the question: is Rudd really going to approve a draft treaty that could force Australia to hand over an astonishing $7 billion a year to a new and unelected global authority?
Yes, that's $7 billion, or about $330 from every man, woman and child. Every year. To be passed on to countries such as China and Bangladesh, and the sticky-fingered in-between.
And a second question, perhaps even more important: is Rudd really going to approve a draft treaty which also gives that unelected authority the power to fine us billions of dollars more if it doesn't like our green policies?
Copenhagen Treaty
Bill Muehlenberg | The upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference to be held in Copenhagen from December 7-18 is now being talked about all over the blogosphere. This is because of a speech that Lord Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, gave at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. In his speech he warned about the dire consequences of signing the Copenhagen Treaty.
He warned that most people have no idea what is actually in the Treaty, yet most nations around the world seem prepared to sign it, even though it may involve giving away national sovereignty, and handing over inordinate power to a global governing body. This is a part of what he had to say in his speech:
“At Copenhagen, this December, weeks away, a treaty will be signed. Your president will sign it. Most of the third world countries will sign it, because they think they’re going to get money out of it. Most of the left-wing regimes from the European Union will rubber stamp it. Virtually nobody won’t sign it.
“I read that treaty. And what it says is this, that a world government is going to be created. The word ‘government’ actually appears as the first of three purposes of the new entity. The second purpose is the transfer of wealth from the countries of the West to third world countries, in satisfaction of what is called, coyly, ‘climate debt’ – because we’ve been burning CO2 and they haven’t. We’ve been screwing up the climate and they haven’t. And the third purpose of this new entity, this government, is enforcement.
Greens ask for gay marriage vote
09/11 Sky News | Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been asked to allow Labor MPs a free parliamentary vote on gay marriage.
Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young is hoping her bill to allow marriage regardless of sex, sexuality and gender will be debated by parliament in the new year. 'I'm calling for the prime minister to ... grant his members a conscience vote so we can get a true reflection of how the Australian community is feeling,' she told ABC Television on Monday.
Tasmanian Government urged to step up palliative care support following welcome defeat of euthanasia bill
Australian Christian Lobby | The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) tonight welcomed the resounding defeat of the Tasmanian euthanasia bill by the Tasmanian Parliament and challenged the Government to now step up palliative care support and resources for people with terminal illnesses, particularly in regional areas.
ACL Tasmanian Director Nick Overton said that tonight’s defeat of the Dying with Dignity Bill 2009 was a victory for those who value life and for vulnerable sick, elderly and depressed people who would have been put at risk by the bill.
“We congratulate Lower House parliamentarians for rejecting a bill which could have corrupted the practice of medicine in Tasmania and sent dangerous messages to the sick and elderly who might otherwise have felt there was an expectation they should terminate their lives if they had become an ‘inconvenience’ to society. This would have been an inhumane situation.
Alan Jones Interviews Lord Monckton on the Copenhagen Treaty
Listen to the interview
(This will open in a new window)
Beware the UN’s Copenhagen plot
Janet Albrechtsen | SHAME on us all: on us in the media and on our politicians. Despite thousands of news reports, interviews, analyses, critiques and commentaries from journalists, what has the inquiring, intellectually sceptical media told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty? And despite countless speeches, addresses, interviews, doorstops, moralising sermons from government ministers, pleas from Canberra for an outcome at Copenhagen, opposition criticism of government policy, what have our elected representatives told us about the potential details of a Copenhagen treaty?
With just over 40 days until more than 15,000 officials, advisers, diplomats, activists and journalists from more than 190 countries attend the UN climate change conference in Copenhagen, we know nothing. Nothing about a climate change treaty that the Rudd government is keen to sign and one that will bind this country for years to come.
Of course, there is no final treaty as yet. That is what they are hoping to finalise in Copenhagen. But there are 181 pages that make up the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change dated September 15, 2009: a rough draft of what could be signed in Copenhagen. And yet, not one member of the media or political class has bothered to inform us about its contents as an important clue to what may happen in Copenhagen. The shame of that state of affairs started to trickle in last week.
Emails started arriving telling me about a speech given by Christopher Monckton, a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, at Bethel University in St Paul, Minnesota, on October 14. Monckton talked about something that no one has talked about in the lead-up to Copenhagen: the text of the draft Copenhagen treaty.
Copenhagen Treaty
03/11 Quadrant | A PDF copy of the famous Copenhagen Treaty, 'which few seem to have read', is here:
Embroiled in a lethal argument
07/11 Christopher Pearson, The Australian | LAST week the longstanding majority against legalised euthanasia in the South Australian upper house came perilously close to collapsing. Most observers doubt that Ann Bressington, the Legislative Council independent member who cast her vote to enable further debate on a legalisation bill, will ultimately support it. But even if she were to do so, there is not enough time for the House of Assembly to consider it in the last fortnight of sittings before Christmas and the long recess until the state election in March. So the present bill will lapse.
However, the election marks the retirement of some steadfast opponents of euthanasia and their replacement in both chambers by people who've indicated support for the bill. In the life of the next parliament, unless Premier Mike Rann decides to exert his considerable influence, a new private member's bill will be introduced and is likely to be passed after a conscience vote.
The PM's address to the Lowy Institute
06/11 Excerpts from the PM's Speech | Australia and the world today stand at critical junctures in our national and global strategies to tackle climate change.
It is around 20 days until the Senate votes on the Australian Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme.
20 days until the most important vote on our national strategy to tackle climate change.
20 days away from the vote on the Government’s cap and trade emissions trading system which both sides of politics have recognised as the lowest cost way to tackle climate change.
And we are just 31 days away from the Copenhagen Conference of Parties – an historic moment to forge a global deal to put a global price on carbon.
Today we are approaching the crossroads. Both these policies are reaching crunch time.
When you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices – action or inaction. The resolve of the Australian Government is clear – we choose action, and we do so because Australia’s fundamental economic and environmental interests lie in action.
Action now. Not action delayed.
.... President Obama in the United States is also working hard so that he can take strong commitments to Copenhagen. And let us never forget that in the US, as in Australia, under both our respective previous governments, zero action was taken on bringing in cap and trade schemes meaning that the governments that replaced them began with a zero start.
Other countries are striving to build domestic political momentum in their own countries to take strong commitments into the global deal.
The challenge we face, and others around the world face, is to build momentum and overcome domestic political constraints.
The truth is this is hard, because the climate change skeptics, the climate change deniers, the opponents of climate change action are active in every country.
They are a minority. They are powerful. And invariably they are driven by vested interests.
Powerful enough to so far block domestic legislation in Australia, powerful enough to so far slow down the passage of legislation through the US Congress. And ultimately – by limiting the ambition of national climate change commitments – they are powerful enough to threaten a deal on global climate change both in Copenhagen and beyond. ..."
Make a Stand for a child’s right to mum AND dad
Australian Christian Lobby News |
With the Queensland Government determined to introduce and pass by the end of the year legislation to allow same sex surrogacy, it is imperative that Queenslanders act now to preserve every child’s right to at least begin life with a mum and dad.
Please visit our ‘Wanted: Mum AND Dad’ campaign at www.makeastand.org.au to send an email to Queensland politicians, urging them to reject the proposed surrogacy laws, and not rob children of the complementary love and care of a mother and a father.
Also online is an electronic petition requesting that the Queensland Parliament reject laws which allow children to be born through artificial reproductive technology and deliberately placed in fatherless or motherless relational constructs.
If you live in Queensland please sign the petition today, and urge your family and friends to do likewise.
Lord Monckton's Speech
On October 14, Lord Christopher Monckton gave a presentation in St. Paul, MN on the subject of global warming.
In this 4-minute excerpt from his speech, he issues a dire warning to all Americans regarding the United Nations
Climate Change Treaty that is scheduled to be signed in Copenhagen in December 2009.
A plague of atheists has descended, and Catholics are the target
04/11 Greg Craven, The Age | FROM time immemorial, this world has been troubled by plagues. From bogong moths in Canberra to frogs in biblical Egypt, unwelcome and unlovely creatures have the awkward habit of turning up in bulk.
Just now, we are facing one of our largest and least appealing infestations. Somewhat in advance of summer's blowflies, we are beset by atheists. Worse, they are not traditional atheists. These tended to be quiet blokes called Algie with ancillary interests in nudist ceramics, who were perfectly happy as long as you pretended to accept a pamphlet in Flinders Lane.
No, the new hobby atheist is as brash, noisy and confident as a cheap electric kettle. They want everyone to know that they have not found God, and that no one else should. Their particular target seems to be Catholics.
VICTORIA: Birth mothers and lesbian partners to be listed as parents on Victorian birth certificates
06/11 Padraic Murphy, Herald Sun | BIRTH mothers and their lesbian partners will both be listed as parents on Victorian birth certificates from next year under sweeping changes to be introduced by the State Government.
The Government is also to introduce next month a Relationship Register, which will give homosexual couples the same status as de facto and heterosexual couples under Victorian law
Sickness that curbs religious freedom
01/11 Angela Shanahan, The Australian | AS anyone who reads this column may know, I am not in favour of a charter of rights in this country, basically because we don't need one.
It would usurp the elected parliament, give activist judges unprecedented power and -- under the guise of defining and extending rights -- narrow the ambit of rights, pushing on to us the preoccupations of a few.
This has happened in Britain, especially in the area of religious freedom, as British legal expert Paul Diamond told The Australian this week: "It is good to be 10 years behind. I have seen the future and it doesn't work."
But we don't have to go to Britain to see the future where religion or anything associated with it, even its charitable mission, is relegated to the private sphere and bluntly told that it doesn't belong in the public square. I have seen that, too, because I Iive in Futureville, ACT. The future is Canberra.
Values-based school programs need greater ACT Government support
Australian Christian Lobby | Values-based teaching is vital for the healthy development of young people and needs greater support in the ACT rather than suspending it on the basis of an over-reaction by one or two parents, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) said today.
Responding to the ACT Government’s decision to investigate Focus on the Family Australia’s ‘No Apologies Impact’ seminars in ACT schools, ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said it is completely appropriate for high schools students to have access to a values-based program on sex education alongside the other material they are taught on this issue.
Link-Zone does not necessarily endorse the views held by contributors, or by authors of linked websites. The material in the Link-Zone site is provided for your information to assist you in forming your own opinion. It is Link-Zone's hope that you are able to find quality resources that will help you in your research of contemporary debates and issues. We are also unable to endorse the content of external sites linked to via Link-Zone pages & advise that you exercise proper caution when visiting websites you are unfamiliar with.
Ready for fight to the death
NATION HELD HOSTAGE TO ETS 
Rudd facing naked truth
Joe Hockey being lined up to lead Liberals 
Tripped up by Rudd's rules 
Bill Muehlenberg | 
.... President Obama in the United States is also working hard so that he can take strong commitments to Copenhagen. And let us never forget that in the US, as in Australia, under both our respective previous governments, zero action was taken on bringing in cap and trade schemes meaning that the governments that replaced them began with a zero start. 
