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“Premier Campbell Newman is to be congratulated on maintaining the Queensland Government’s commitment to halving homelessness in Queensland by 2020”, said Karyn Walsh, Coordinator of Micah Projects, a not-for-profit organisation working with hundreds of people in Brisbane who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. (more…)“Julia Gillard: Australian blokes have done their country down” – Telegraph UK
Julia Gillard has been driven out as Australia’s prime minister by a brutal and unfair misogynist culture
The UK media can comment on misogyny in Australia, but Australian society is not yet ready to look at itself. It seems the male owned media and the men of Australia, and women anti-feminists, many of whom are women who in more or less subtle ways look to male patronage, are not yet ready to go beyond reactive denial and face a very dark aspect of Australian culture.
I ask you to substitute race or disability or gender in your arguements about sexism and misogyny in Australia and discern if you feel any twinges of shame at the positions some of you are defending.
And is this list sophisticated enough to engage in this debate, or will it retreat to entrenched positions.
I also ask you to reread Henry Lawson The Drovers Wife and ask if we’ve progressed much since then. I fear we have edged forward very little.
And lets not be so cocky in our criticism of Islam, where the female victim of rape is punished for bringing shame to the reputation of men in the culture, and other so called ‘honour killings’. Germaine Greer once commented that one of the most important roles expected of ‘gatherers’ was to protect the ego of the ‘hunters’ in the socalled ‘hunter’ ‘gatherer’ view of gender roles.
I watched a documentary recently on corruption in Sumo wrestling in Japan where contests were rigged around betting scams. It took years to crack the corruption. One commentator put it down to 2 words for truth in Japan, one meaning the actual truth and one the convenient truth. Saving face for the deeply entrenched male sumo culture meant the actual truth could not be discussed, only the convenient truth that sumo heroism was incapable of negative behaviours and societal critism.
Mendacity requires scape goats on which to heap all that cannot be faced which must be driven out of the community so the convenient truth can continue.
The convenient truth that sexism and misogyny played no role in Julia’s demise displays an inability to challenge the blokey hegemony of Australian society. Are Australian men not up to challenges to their behaviours and their self image.
Julia is a typical scape goat, all that is blackest in Australian sexism and misogyny has been heaped on Julia’s head and now she’s been driven out, all can return to the convenient truth and the discussion about what we all just witnessed? – there’s powerful forces for no discussion but to take the easy path and just move on. The blood letting, the sacrifice has absolved us of self critique.
Well let’s challenge that. We’ve never had a better case study than the last 3 years of our first woman prime minister, one who put her faith for success as a woman in competance, which turned out not to be enough.
Lets not settle back into convenient truths. Do we have the guts to look sqarely at the behaviours of Abbotrt, Rudd, the media and give Ausrtralia the opportunity to become more sophisticated in its sexism debate. Like it has done with race and disability.
I ask the men on this list, how would you feel about Julia’s treatement if she was your daughter?
And don’t forget the misogyny in the Armed forces revealed the same week as Julia’s demise, and the Royal Commission into sexual abuse which is breaking through the convenient truths of the Catholic Church, and other institutions.
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Greens candidate for Griffith, Geoff Ebbs, has received support from disaffected Rudd staffers and volunteers.
“The evening he won the leadership an ex-staffer asked for Greens campaign account details so that she could donate to the campaign.” Mr Ebbs said.
The Greens volunteer workshop in Coorparoo on Saturday will include many ex-Labor voters, volunteers and members, a spokesperson for the candidate said.
The religious leaders say they are as one on human-induced climate change and have called for bipartisan support for carbon pricing, the fast-tracking of renewable energy and the winding back of coal exports.
Carbon pricing is opposed by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott but supported by Labor.
The letter follows a prediction from scientists at a conference in Tasmania this week that sea level rises will likely be double the .5m forecast by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the end of this century.
Professor Tim Naish, director of the Antarctic Research Centre at Victoria University of Wellington, said the window was closing quickly on mitigation options in terms of a world response.
“Rises could be higher than what the upper bounds of IPCC would suggest,” Prof Naish said. “We have got to prepare for a world with extreme climate. Wetter areas will be wetter and warmer places will get warmer.”
CO2 levels have passed 400 ppm for the first time in 3 million years.
Weather bureau chief Rob Vertessy said humankind was changing the earth at a rapid pace and in a way that had never happened before.
“Change on the planet largely stems from population growth, growing consumption and that is going to accelerate all kinds of environmental processes,” Dr Vertessy said.
“We are going to lose a lot more natural capital and the climate and earth will change with it.”
Prominent religious leaders to sign the letter include the Grand Mufti Dr Ibrahim Abu Mohammad; the Chair of Catholic Earthcare Australia, Archbishop Philip Wilson; the President of the Uniting Church Assembly, Rev Professor Andrew Dutney; and the Chair of the Hindu Council of Australia, Professor Nihal Agar.
The letter, which has gone viral on social media a week before its formal launch, says: “Influential bodies are now warning us about an unthinkable 4C rise in temperatures if greenhouse gas emissions continue to increase. Recent experiences of extreme weather events, both here and overseas, are a mild foretaste of what this will mean.”
Uniting Church NSW-ACT Moderator, the Reverend Dr Brian Brown said: “We urge all Australians to give this moral issue the attention it demands. If we don’t, our children and grandchildren will face devastating consequences because of our failure to act now.”
In the 2011 Census, more than 67 per cent of Australians identified themselves with the religions from which the signatories are drawn.
With the world gathering for a well deserved round of Mandela-worship it is worth remembering that it is only five years ago that this great man was taken off the US terrorist watch list.
Hi Kevin,
I trust you don’t mind if I call you Kevin do you, since you called me by my first name?
Thank you for your letter, and quite timely too. Congratulations on your becoming both the 26th and the 28th Prime Minister of Australia.
And it is quite interesting that you reference “Negative personal politics” given what has transpired over the last 18 hours or so…