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Sunday, 8th February 1998
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[The Canberra
Column] [Economic
Rationalism]
Day
by day reports on the Constitutional Conventional reports by Peter
Mackay
Exposing the native title farce - views by a Roman Catholic priest.
"The High Court in Mabo recognised native title according to ‘their’ tribal law and custom. By allowing mixed race aborigines as native title claimants, native title is recognised according to ‘our’ law in the Native Title Act. The distinction is important."
What the article exposes is the fact that most Native Title claims are fraudulent because under aboriginal tribal law only full blood aboriginal males can own tribal lands.
The claims by aboriginal women and mixed-blood aborigines (90% of the claimants) are contrary to the Mabo ruling which refers to the native title rights being in "accordance with tribal laws".
The "We're Sorry Pauline," electronic book.
A moderated electronic "We're Sorry Pauline (Hanson)," electronic book will be established later today.
The book is dedicated to Australia's gutsiest politician and all readers are encouraged to place electronic messages to Pauline and to sign the book. Unlike the politically correct "sorry" books doing the rounds this book will look at the (mainly media) orchestrated trials and tribulations facing currently Ms Hanson because of the undemocratic way in which we find ourselves in Australia today.
The other "sorry" books doing the rounds have little or no relevance to what is happening in Australia today and are a farce.
Meanwhile about 4,000 mainly aboriginal people gathered in King George Square last night to hear poody-tat Lord Mayor Jim Soorley talk the talk and then present an elder, Herb Bligh, with the keys to the city.
Soorley said that people should feel guilty about what happened to the aborigines in the past when speaking about the so-called stolen children.
He said it was normal for people
to say sorry when they suffered pain.
Over 700 aborigines marched from Musgrave Park to King George square to meet an assembly which largely resembled the no-hopers who hang around protesting outside One Nation meetings.
Hardly the face of mainstream Australia one would think, but there again maybe I am just being politically incorrect by being "populist" in my thinking!
Australia to fight America's battles again?
Yesterday Bill Clinton, the US President in the middle of a sex allegation row, called Australian Prime Minister John Howard and called on him to send Australian troops to the gulf in support of his fight with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
The Russian President Boris Yeltsin has already warned Clinton that an attack on Iraq could start another world war while China has also been beating its chest telling the US to leave the Iraqi's alone.
This week's classic quote in today's Sunday Mail from that uninformed oaf Terry Sweetman:
"It probably makes any self-respecting woman even more determined to dismantle the celluloid myth of the stumble-footed, eyelash-fluttering, sex-trading, namby-pamby, run-from-a-mouse, stamina-deficient escapee from the kitchen sink."
Reminds me of that classic, "A gentility of courtly deference featured demurely at one of Greytown's social events on Saturday."
Making the
news" -
The Power of the Convention
Old Parliament House has returned to its state of slumber this weekend. The delegates have either gone home or are playing tourist around the sights of Canberra. The politicians have gone to wherever politicians go and the media likewise. In my case, it involves feet up with a cool beer on a hot day, and I suspect that this is a common pastime following the frenzied first week.
I poked my nose into Kings Hall earlier on. A few tourists, still having to go through the metal detectors in the basement entrance, but otherwise deserted.
I spoke to Bob Hawke outside the Representatives Chamber, who reckoned that this had been such a great event that we would very likely see the old building used for more and more of these functions.
I hope so. I cannot really describe the excitement and the bustle inside Old Parliament House, except to say that it was something that fed on itself, and was nourished by the place as much as the people.
The delegates home for the weekend may well have difficulty in describing the experience to family and friends. But it will all start again on Monday morning, with every indication of a second week even more frenzied and dramatic than the first.
They will argue for and against a republic, but that issue was settled long ago. We are a republic, and have been since Federation, simply because we, the people, are the only ones who may approve a change to our constitution. No approval after a referendum campaign, then no change.
And this is something that some of the delegates have forgotten, or perhaps never knew in the first place. Regardless of what emerges from the convention, whether it be cow or consensus, it is the people who will ultimately decide on the issue.
There can be no change without a wider community consensus. The major parties, the states, the interest groups, and the media must all pretty much tell the same story, and it is only if the arguments for change far outweigh those against that change is made. We've only ever made eight amendments to our constitution in forty-one attempts and I see no reason to imagine that the people will suddenly stop using their brains when considering important changes to the way our government works.
So the delegates may well think that they have an important, privileged role in the process, and to be fair, they do. But it is not the be-all and end-all of things. When they go home at the end of the second week, their job and their importance is over, and the power moves to the parties, the states, the media and ultimately, the people.
The Australian people have never approved a radical change, instead preferring the slower and easily understood processes of evolution over those of uncontrolled revolution. I think that the Australian Republican Movement may well see its preferred model emerge triumphant from the convention, almost certainly with significant concessions to the direct election camp on one side and the monarchists on the other.
But the constitutional monarchists have already won the war. We are a constitutional monarchy now and will remain so whatever the delegates decide. The monarchists do not have to promote their views at all, their preferred position is a matter of established fact out in the real world.
I am not sure that the delegates grasp this fact. For instance, there was a vote taken late on Friday afternoon over a motion requesting the Treasurer, also a delegate, to prepare an estimate of the costs of transistion to a republic. The vote failed narrowly, but this has no effect at all on the Treasurer, who is a Government Minister and will act in that capacity regardless of this convention.
Of course he will prepare an estimate of the cost of a republic and present it to the people. The fact that the radical republicans were those arguing the strongest against the people being informed will be a spur, not a curb on his actions.
A telling point. Despite all their protestations of "power to the people", the extreme republican group is not interested in the people at all. They do not want to see the people told of the cost of a republic, and they certainly do not want to have ordinary Australians see the position of Head of State as something to which they can aspire. The Treasurer's brother, the Reverend Tim Costello, made this crystal clear on Thursday, as I pointed out in "So Much for Democracy!".
In the vote that counts, the referendum, promised for 1999, it is the people
whe get the final say. But in the heady atmosphere of Old Parliament House
when proceedings resume on Monday, I doubt that too many delegates will remember
the
people.
Subject: Animal Farm Revisited
Dear Sir,
After reading the reports from your Canberra correspondent
and watching some of the speakers at the Constipational Convention, I was
reminded of the pigs in "Animal Farm". In particular I recalled the commandments
written by the pigs on the end of the barn wall where it stated that : "All
Animals are Equal"
......and then at a later date, without the knowledge or permission of the
"equal animals", it read : "Some animals are more equal than others"
The trigger for these thoughts was by non other than the brother of one half of the famous comedy duo, Abbot and Costello, The Reverend Tim Costello, who is of course one half of another comedy duo, namely Costello and The Abbott.
In his quagmire speech, The Holier than Thou Reverend Tim Costello, has painted a picture of what we can expect life to be like under a republican administration in Australia. How can I improve on the words of the Reverend Costello when he said (Quote Hansard 5th February 1998) "I am worried about direct election models even with a threshold of one percent of the population being able to nominate in so far as they will give platforms to Pauline Hansons, Shooters and a whole range of people who can get a one percent threshold and run a national election campaign".
So where's the problem Rev.? I thought that the reason that we wanted to get rid of the monarchy was because if you were not borne into the royal family then you could never aspire to be a head of state. I thought that under an Australian Republic, every single Australian Citizen would have an equal opportunity to achieve "the highest post in the land". Well, I guess that is going to be the case......so long as you are not "Pauline Hansons, Shooters and a whole range of people". We know who Pauline Hanson is and we know who Shooters are ( in case you hadn't noticed, they are the millions of gun owners who do Hoddle Street and Port Arthur Massacres), but these others........?
May I be so bold as to ask his Holiness just who he includes in this "whole range of other people" ? May I be even bolder to suggest that this ""whole range of other people", includes you, me and everyone who is not part of the "New Elite Ruling Class". It includes any person who dares to question the word of the pompous self-appointed prigs like the Most Reverend Tim Costello or of Comrade Malcolm Turnbull and "a whole range of other people" who have dedicated their lives to the destruction of this once Great Young Nation. It is my belief that these people are so lacking in self worth as human beings that they can never hope to live up to the qualities necessary to be a true Patriotic Australian, so have decided that if you can't be it, destroy it. This is the ultimate envy.
So there we have it folks...life in the Republic of Australia (soon to renamed Planet Earth Inc.. Mining Division) into the next millennium. "May the Farce be with You".
Allan W.Doak
Subject: Work for the dole, 2
My thanks to SE Wagger for his or her reply regarding the requirement to be actively seeking work to qualify for the dole. I know this, and my son knows it, because he actually worked at the former CES for a few months helping applicants fill out their forms!
Nevertheless the majority just put in their forms once a fortnight and in effect, do get 'paid' for doing nothing. That is the reality.
This is wrong, and this is what a 'work-for-the-dole' scheme will rectify. Recipients will have to earn their dole, and I have no objection to them being paid at pro-rata award rates if they qualify for such awards.
My objection was targeted at all the prominent critics who so roundly condemned the scheme - the various 'youth advocates', the Orwellian-named 'welfare' spokesmen, the ACTU, the Labor government. Hypocrites all of them, because Britain's Labour Tony Blair is moving strongly in the same area of policy. Beazely as PM would do the same. If he didn't, he'd have to be a 5-star, card-carrying political idiot.
The scheme is not perfect but it will get the young unemployed out of bed in the morning, just as all workers, school-children, students, wives and mothers of young children have to. Surely that is a Good Thing.
Name Withheld
Another perfect day in paradise.
Have a good one.
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