2nd
October, 2006
Lateline
Interview with Tony Jones
...
TONY JONES: You also seem to be arguing
by key personal, moral issues identified
by conservative Christian, like abortion,
euthanasia, stem cell research, homosexuality,
are all of a lesser order than the
big picture issues of poverty and
injustice?
.... KEVIN RUDD: No, they're of a
different order. When it comes to
questions of, let's call it the life
issues of abortion and euthanasia
and stem cell research; plainly these
are matters of deep individual conscience
as they affect the fundamental existence
of human life. When it comes to questions
of human sexuality, then of course
you'll have questions of conscience
as well as a broader social responsibility.
Link
for full transcript / context here: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1753915.htm
See Left side Links for Labor's history of conscience voting on Abortion and current policies.
13/2 Matthew Franklin for The Australian | ... the winds of change were freshening as a majority of Labor MPs refused to be sworn in holding Bibles, instead exercising their option to offer an affirmation of allegiance. Of the Labor frontbench, only Mr Rudd, Simon Crean, Martin Ferguson and Peter Garrett took the Bible in hand as they declared their allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs and successors.
In marked contrast, all members of the God-fearing Coalition front bench swore on the Bible, many supplying their own for the occasion.
DAILY TELEGRAPH - November 30, 2007 11:20am
Public servants will advise me, not God: Rudd
KEVIN Rudd makes no secret of his religious beliefs, but as prime minister he says he'll take advice from public servants, not God.The committed Christian says he is not praying for guidance on how to run the country. Mr Rudd said he would keep religion and politics separate.
"I go to church on Sunday like millions of other Australians, and I am always conscious in the business of politics of what I don't know, and therefore the need to seek advice," Mr Rudd told Southern Cross Broadcasting in Melbourne. "That's usually obtained, however, from well-crafted reports from public service advisers."
Mr Rudd said his faith had been part and parcel of his life for 30 years. While it would colour his decisions, it would not play a major role, he said.
"I'm as flawed and failed as the next person when it comes to living up to the high standards laid down by the principles of Christianity," he said. "That's part of who I am, that's part of who I'll be in the future.
"But I've always said when it comes to the business of government, it's a process where rational discussion, rational debate, rational decision-making must be at the absolute core, but always informed by deep values of what is decent and fair for people."
2nd October, 2006 Lateline
Interview with Tony Jones
"... There is an entirely different
tradition of Christianity and politics,"
which we would call Christian Social
Democracy, which needs to be heard,
and that's why I'm speaking out.
Source Link
: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2006/s1753915.htm
October,
2006 Edition of the Monthly Magazine
"
... Apart from the great questions
of wealth, poverty and social justice,
a second area of long-standing contention
in church-state relations has been
the doctrine of the just war. What
is the Christian view of violence
by the state? What specifically is
the Christian view of the state itself
employing violence against other states? These debates are ultimately anchored
in the Christian concern for the sanctity
of all human life. Human life can
only be taken in self-defence, and
only then under highly conditional
circumstances - circumstances
which include the exhaustion of all
other peaceful means to resolve a
dispute; and if war is to be embarked
upon, then the principles of proportionality
must apply.
Link
for full transcript / context here:
:
Faith
in Politics by Kevin Rudd (The Monthly
Magazine)br>
http://www.themonthly.com.au/excerpts/issue17_excerpt_001.html
Battle
in the Bible belt
Festival of Light Newsletter - 2004
"Hey,
I'm not good!" Kevin Rudd said. "Romans
chapter 3 says that all have sinned
and fallen short of the glory of God."
He said it is only by the free gift
of God that we can be saved, and none
of us deserve it on our own merits.
"Like
Tony [Zappia], I was born a Catholic
- but in my case it was only nominal,"
Kevin said. "My father died when I
was young, as a result of an accident.
I grew up on a farm in Queensland.
Life was very hard for my mother and
us children. But later on I came to
know Jesus - I was converted to Christianity
at the age of 18."
Kevin
said many people do not realise that
the Labor Party was founded by Christians.
Keir Hardie is one of his special
heroes. Born in poverty in Scotland
in 1856, Keir's only education was
in a Presbyterian Sunday School. There
he learned to read, and the Bible
was his only book.
By
the age of eight Keir Hardie was already
working in the local coal pits. As
he grew older his stepfather, a trade
unionist, encouraged him to seek justice
for the workers. Later Keir stood
for parliament as an independent and
became the first leader of the British
Labour Party in the House of Commons
in 1906.
Kevin
said one of Keir Hardie's miner friends
in Scotland's Ayrshire was another
Presbyterian called Andrew Fisher.
Andrew migrated to Queensland and
settled in Gympie where he was among
the early founders of the Australian
labor movement. In 1908 he became
Australia's second Labor Prime Minister
The Encyclopaedia Britannica notes
that Hardie's Labour Party became
very popular among the working classes
because it was not academic like the
Fabian Society, and it was openly
Christian - not atheist like the communists.
But times have changed. Gough Whitlam
became the new face of the Australian
Labor Party in 1972. He is a member
of the socialist Fabian Society and
an agnostic. Bob Hawke, the next Labor
Prime Minister, is the same. Mark
Latham, the new leader, is an agnostic
guided by his mentor Whitlam. Mark's
younger son is called Isaac Gough
Latham.
Kevin
Rudd's heart is with Labor's Christian
founding heroes but he is now in a
minority in his party. He pointed
the finger at Australia's major churches
who are no longer attracting big crowds
to their pews. "My party merely reflects
the Australian people," he said. However
the majority of Australians still
call themselves Christian. Bible based
churches such as Baptists and Pentecostals
are growing in numbers.
Kevin
reminded the pastors that politicians
can only achieve so much. "There is
a whole lot - such as values formation
- that is up to you in the churches,"
he said.
CLONING AND DESTRUCTION OF HUMAN EMBRYOS FOR RESEARCH :
Kevin Rudd voted against the cloning and destruction of human embryos for research during the last Federal parliament's Conscience Vote on the issue.
Embryo cloning gets the go-ahead
December 2006, Sydney Morning Herald | AUSTRALIAN scientists will be able to clone human embryos for medical research under legislation passed by Parliament which divided the country's most senior politicians
In a rare conscience vote, the House of Representatives passed the controversial measures despite the Prime Minister [John Howard] urging MPs to vote against the bill because it eroded some of society's most absolute values.
.... The new Opposition Leader, Kevin Rudd, also opposed the legislation, saying it crossed a fundamental ethical threshold by allowing human life to be created for the purpose of scientific experimentation
... John Howard was joined in voting against the bill by the Treasurer, Peter Costello, the Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, the Health Minister, Tony Abbott, as well as Mr Rudd and Labor MPs Peter Garrett, Gavan O'Connor and Tony Burke.
Mr Rudd said: "I find it very difficult to support a legal regime which allows creation of a form of human life with the single purpose of allowing the conduct of experimentation. I am concerned with the crossing of such an ethical threshold and where it may lead in the long term."
"... The
Labor party is committed to equality
for gay men, lesbians and same sex
couples and, if elected, will remove
provisions which discriminate on the
basis of sexuality.
That means ending discrimination in
the areas of taxation, superannuation,
social security benefits, the Medicare
Safety Net, immigration, veteran's
entitlements and all other areas (aside
from the Marriage Act). All practical,
day-to-day discrimination faced by
the gay and lesbian communities will
be removed from our laws.
At
the party's National Conference in
May, Labor formally committed to a
nationally consistent system of state-based
relationship recognition. The scheme
will cover a range of non-marital
relationships including same-sex relationships,
de facto heterosexual relationships
and certain carer relationships.
These
schemes would simply act as a means
by which any de facto couple could
register their relationship for the
purposes of recognition by government.
Such
schemes are not civil unions or gay
marriage. There is no ceremony involved,
and they would not come under the
marriage power in the Constitution,
nor affect the definition of marriage
in the Marriage Act 1961 as "a voluntary
union entered into by a man and a
woman to the exclusion of all others,
for life".
Only
a Federal Labor Government can deliver
on law reform that allows gay and
lesbian individuals to be treated
with the same justice and dignity
that they not only are entitled to,
but that is already afforded to every
other member of the community.
In
May 2007 Saltshakers asked the question:
How can anyone
justify saying that and then DISCRIMINATE
by NOT giving them equal 'rights'
to marriage, IVF and the adoption
of Children?
What does "all other areas" really
mean?
Labor
backs legal rights for same-sex couples
Sydney
Morning Herald / Mark Davis Political
Correspondent, April 28, 2007
"LABOR has backed a national
scheme to legally recognise same-sex
relationships after a divisive debate
at its national conference in which
opponents of the scheme warned that
it would demean marriage and the family
and hurt the party's electoral prospects.
The ALP conference voted by a clear
majority in favour of national legislation
like Tasmanian laws, which allow same-sex
couples to register their relationship
and secure legal recognition of their
relationship in areas such as property
rights and superannuation benefits.."
...
AN EMBARRASSED Kevin Rudd has raised
the prospect of his wife, Therese
Rein, having to sell the domestic
arm of her multimillion-dollar business
after it was revealed 58 employees
on individual contracts were underpaid.
.... Ms Rein, ... built her job-placement
business, Ingeus, from scratch. It
profits from government contracts
and Mr Rudd acknowledged yesterday
the couple had talked frequently about
selling it because of the potential
conflicts that could arise if he became
prime minister
...Mr
Rudd said the underpaying of employees
had been an "honest mistake", which
Ms Rein had rectified upon discovery.
...One
of Ms Rein's businesses, Your Employment
Solutions (YES), employed its 220
workers on common-law contracts which
removed such award entitlements as
penalty rates, overtime pay and allowances
in return for an extra 45 cents an
hour.
"This
is in stark contrast to the Labor
Party and the trade union movement
who are prepared to trample over the
top of people who may be acting in
good faith but, at the same time,
are running businesses to help to
employ other Australians."
Mr
Hockey said Labor had "whipped up
outrage" after reports the Lilac City
Motor Inn in Goulburn used Australian
Workplace Agreements to put employees
on the minimum wage and remove award
entitlements. He said the owners of
the motel, Don and Joann Doolan, were
paying their staff more than reports
had claimed but the negative publicity
resulted in cancelled bookings and
hate calls and emails.
Link
for full transcript / context here:
: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/yes-therese-we-need-to-talk/2007/05/24/1179601579533.html?sssdmh=dm16.26158
IT'S an extraordinary start. Kevin Rudd becomes Prime Minister and, well within his first 100 days, walks straight into the history books. That is the truth about his parliamentary apology to the Stolen Generation.
... Had John Howard delivered the apology in 1997, when it was first recommended in the Bringing Them Home report, the outpouring of feeling would not have been nearly as great. Howard's decade of intransigence magnified the importance of the gesture. Rudd saw that and used it to put his own stamp on the prime ministership in spectacular fashion.
... The surprising thing is that, in his years as a bureaucrat and then an MP, Rudd had never really been part of the bleeding heart brigade on Aboriginal affairs. Until nine months ago he had difficulty seeing any real practical value in the push for an apology. He finally put it all together in his head when he came to prepare a speech for a function on May 27 last year to mark the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum which gave the Federal Government power to legislate for indigenous Australians. It was remarkable that Rudd was able to focus on the issue at all. The newspapers at the time were full of headlines about an investigation into the (accidental) underpayment of some workers by a company owned by his wife, Therese Rein.
... Shrugging off that distraction to write the referendum speech, the then Opposition leader saw the links. Before practical measures could be effective it was necessary to build a bridge between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians. That required respect rather than contempt and suspicion. Saying sorry was about respect.
To say he played Brendan Nelson as a fisherman plays a trout would be unfair - but he certainly manipulated events to ensure images of unity and bipartisanship overshadowed divisions in Coalition ranks and any equivocation in the Opposition Leader's words.
During the Aboriginal "welcome to country" ceremony at the opening of Parliament, for example, Rudd involved Nelson by giving him just a few minutes' notice that he would be invited to speak. After the sorry vote, Rudd - again with no warning - invited Nelson to join him in parading around the chamber waving to the galleries before presenting to the Speaker a gift from Stolen Generation representatives.
And the PM deliberately ambushed Nelson with his public invitation to co-chair a kind of "war cabinet" on indigenous housing and other issues, giving the Opposition Leader no chance to confer with colleagues or lay down conditions before accepting.
Link
for full transcript / context here: http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,23219326-5001030,00.html
ARTICLES & GENERAL QUOTES:
Swan & Rudd
“When Rudd rolled Beazley from the Labor leadership last December, he kept Swan on as his Shadow Treasurer. No one predicted it. Everyone thought Swan, deeply loyal to Beazley, trenchant in his detestation of Rudd, would be herded to an outer paddock.
That the two men agreed to work together in Labor’s two key jobs, and possibly to lead the country later this year, was not the result of a factional deal. Nor did Swan grovel to Rudd. The public won’t see any forced backslapping. They will see a genuine relationship – not warm, but real.”
The Bulletin, April 17, 2007 “Swan’s Song” by Paul Toohey, Page 17
Don't forget 39 Labor MPs didn't want Kevin Rudd
(27/11) Crikey.Com | Slicing through Labor's post-election euphoria is the stark fact that 39 of Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd's parliamentary colleagues voted against him for the leadership less than 12 months ago. They wanted to keep Kim Beazley in the job so that he could have a third crack at the prime ministership. In the caucus wash-up, Rudd received 49 votes to win by just 10.
The anti-Ruddsters were: Wayne Swan, Stephen Smith, Anthony Albanese, Stephen Conroy, Martin Ferguson, Jenny Macklin, Tanya Plibersek, Penny Wong, Craig Emerson, Chris Evans, Carmen Lawrence, Dick Adams, Sharon Bird, Mark Bishop, Carol Brown, Anna Burke, George Campbell, Kate Ellis, Steve Georganas, Jennie George, Michael Hatton, Chris Hayes, John Hogg, Annette Hurley, Steve Hutchins, Julia Irwin, Duncan Kerr, Catherine King, Joe Ludwig, Anne McEwen, Daryl Melham, John Murphy, Kerry O'Brien, Helen Polley, Bernie Ripoll, Glenn Sterle, Kim Wilkie, Dana Wortley and Kim Beazley.
Since then, some have made peace with Rudd and are assured of senior places in the first Cabinet to be announced at the end of this week eg. Treasurer Swan and Education and Training Minister Smith. Others have quit politics - Beazley and Carmen Lawrence
26/08 Piers Akerman for the The Daily Telegraph |FEDERAL Opposition leader Kevin Rudd may be called to answer questions relating to the destruction of evidence as a police investigation into the rape of a Queensland girl 19 years ago gains new momentum.
The girl, who we will call Alice, was just 14 at the time and resident at the John Oxley Youth Detention Centre, in the care of the Queensland Government, when she was gang raped by other inmates. ... Alice's tragic story is but one strand of this horror, the other is the Goss ALP government's attempt to ignore her plight and bury the incident without trace.
That attempt began when an investigation, directed by former magistrate Noel Heiner and launched by the Cooper National Party government, was shut down by the Goss government when it came to power.
The Goss cabinet ordered the shredding of all the documents collected by Heiner and this marked the beginning of the Heiner Affair. Rudd was Premier Wayne Goss's chief of staff at the time and subsequently became director-general of his cabinet office. It was widely held that nothing took place within cabinet without his knowledge, and he has also claimed his experience running Goss's cabinet has equipped him to be prime minister of Australia.
Though both Rudd and Queensland Premier Peter Beattie claimed as recently as last week that the shredding of the documents needed no further investigation, it has never been fully examined.
Both Rudd and Beattie also rejected the view of former chief justice of the High Court, Sir Harry Gibbs and an unprecedented plea from a former West Australian chief justice (David Malcolm), two retired NSW chief judges (Jack Lee, now deceased, and Dr Frank McGrath), two retired NSW Supreme Court justices (Roddy Meagher and Barry O'Keefe), one of Australia's foremost QCs (Alec Shand) and a legal academic and barrister (Alastair MacAdam) that an independent special prosecutor be appointed to examine the matter.
The most thorough inquiry to date was conducted by a House of Representatives committee chaired by federal MP Bronwyn Bishop, which recommended that "members of the Queensland cabinet at the time that the decision was made to shred the documents gathered by the Heiner inquiry be charged for an offence pursuant to Section 129 of the Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899. Charges pursuant to sections 132 and 140 of the Queensland Criminal Code Act 1899 may also arise''.
Further, a recent two-year audit of the matter by prominent Sydney QC, David Rofe, which ran to 3000 pages contained in nine volumes, concluded there were 67 unaddressed alleged prima facie criminal charges against the cabinet and civil servants that needed to be urgently addressed.
Alice still suffers profound psychological problems, exacerbated by repeated charges that she is a liar, but filed a complaint with the Queensland Police Service in March 2006, following the release under Freedom of Information legislation, which included evidence that the rapists had confessed to both a staffer at the youth centre, and the director of the facility, Peter Coyne.
... Rudd, who describes himself as a "compassionate Christian'' has not sought any inquiry into the attacks on the girl and has not offered any explanation of the destruction of the documents, though he had the responsibility for the business of the cabinet.
... As a number of the nation's most senior legal figures have pointed out, there is a strong precedent for bringing charges against those who ordered and participated in the shredding of the Heiner material, as shown by the case brought against a Baptist pastor Douglas Ensbey.
Ensbey suspected that a member of a family in his congregation was being abused and, while dealing with the mother, was given pages of notes written by the victim.
The family said they would deal with the issue and asked for the pages back, but Ensbey had guillotined them, making them difficult to read.
The victim went to the police, aged 20, and the assailant immediately confessed. The police, however, concentrated on the sliced pages and charged Ensbey with the destruction of evidence under S129. He was found guilty by a jury in March 2004, convicted and sentenced to two year's jail (reduced on appeal to six months, wholly suspended).
The action of the Goss cabinet falls under the same section of the law the police used to pursue Douglas Ensbey
Many see parallels in the campaign by crusaders against child abuse to hound former governor-general Peter Hollingworth from office, though it was never alleged he was involved in a crime.
Former Opposition leader Simon Crean said: "You cannot have people in authority who have covered up for child sex abuse. It is as simple as that''.
And it is. But what can be said about an Opposition Leader who may have been complicit in the illegal shredding of evidence?
If the ALP stands by the standards it applied to Hollingworth, Rudd should resign and answer the questions that the Queensland ALP has worked hard to avoid for 19 years.
If he has a shred of decency, he would consider Alice, and her need for release from the hell she has been forced to live in because of this nauseating cover-up.
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