A new political party launched in Australia last week – the Secular Party of Australia. This new party is committed to the separation of church and state and points out that
- The Liberal Party is too socially conservative
- The ALP is too economically conservative
- The Greens are too socialist economically
- The Democrats are confused about their role
- All these parties condone the unwarranted imposition of religious views.
They do have a point there. I haven’t heard anything about them in the news except from Crikey!, and a search of Google News resulted in: Your search – “Secular Party of Australia” – did not match any documents.
So nice to see that the corporate media are keeping us informed.
John Malkovich and British novelist Nicholas Shakespeare are apparently preparing a film treatment of the story of Truganini. Obviously the story of the last Tasmanian fullblood aborigine(TM) will be controversial, and in a way I think it’s best that the story is not being done by Aussies. Let’s see John Howard try and pressure Malkovich and Shakespeare about not presenting the “black armband” version of history.
Stephen Mayne typoed “cow-towing” for “kowtowing” in an article about Rupert Murdoch, and many ribs were mightily tickled. Obviously cow-towing should now become the national sport: the spectator base seems built in.
Julian “bandwagon” McGauran is an anti-abortionist, likely to support Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce on RU-486, and maybe even get behind Joyce’s idea that vaccinating young girls against cancer is wrong-wrongitty-wrongbecause it might encourage them to go out and have promiscuous sex (cue vapours). After all, it’s obviously only fear of cancer that’s stopped them from becoming right little slappers so far – little things like pregnancy, gonorrhea and herpes not being big enough scarecrows for the religious right it seems. If it wasn’t for the fact that it would necessarily mean that their wives (who surely suffer enough just living with them) would also be infected, I’d wish HPV on all these caring family men who can’t see the women for their wombs, as being so blinded by genitals they will ignore any symptoms and end up with penile cancer (the only known treatment – amputation). It would only be fair.
Categories: linkfest
The 109th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
The 105th Down Under Feminists Carnival is up! 
Hoyden About Town 
the following could have been stripped of its identifiers and passed off as local Oz comments!’I’ve been surfing around, reading blogs and opinion pieces covering Bush’s State of the Union and Kaine’s We’re-Not-Republicans Response. I found one of the best at Huffington Post by Bob Burnett, and thought I’d share the salient points:’ (unfortunately I don’t know in which blog this was quoted..maveet)Tuesday night brought us another example of the weenie effect. George Bush gave his State-of-the-Union Address. Newly elected Virginia Governor, Tim Kaine, followed with the Democratic response. Kaine may be a dynamo as Governor of Virginia, but as the national spokesman for the Democratic Party he was instant weenie. Having observed this phenomenon for the past five years – it reached its nadir with John Kerry – it appears that Democratic speakers are obligated to follow four rules of weenie world. The first is Never, never reveal what the Democratic Party stands for. Apparently, since the end of the Clinton Administration, Party insiders have decided that speakers should under no circumstance say what the Dems stand for. They believe that it is sufficient to state, “We’re not Republicans.” The second rule is Pick a wimpy slogan and say it over and over until everyone knows that it sucks. On Tuesday night, Kaine repeated “There is a better way.” In doing so, Kaine implied he actually knows this better way, that managing the US is just like managing the State of Virginia. “In Virginia… we’re moving ahead by focusing on service, competent management and results… That’s how we in Virginia earned the ranking of America’s ‘Best Managed State.’” Hmm, I haven’t been in Virginia recently, but I don’t believe that managing it is like running the US. Virginia doesn’t have to worry about little things like an imminent Al Qaeda attack. The third rule in weenie world is Don’t push back. Apparently, Democrats feel that it hurts their public image to go after President Bush when he goes on the offensive. They seem to believe that the public expects Dems to be passive, intellectual, even effete. (That’s why John Kerry won the hearts of Americans.) The fourth rule in weenie world is When in doubt, imitate the Republicans. Tim Kaine was selected to give this response because he’s an outspoken Christian; the Dem “brain trust” thought that he’d convince the electorate that Democrats actually have values.