Category Archives: Politics – Australian

“Your First Time” down under

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It is disappointing that the Americans insist on giving credit for the conception behind the “Your First Time” ads directed at young women voters to the Russian President none other than Vladimir Putin when the credit really should go to Sarah Hanson-Young from our very own Australian Green Party. This is from the 2010 Australian election and it is the same idea right down to putting it under the heading, “Your First Time”, the exact same name used in the American Democrat ad.

We can thus see the idea has travelled from the Green Party in Australia to the Democrats in the US, via the election ad for the former head of the KGB as President of Russia. The ad has thus shown up on three different continents, as wide apart as one could possibly travel, but based on the usual empty rhetoric of the deep left.

The deep left always targets the shallow and uninformed who are clueless about the implications of voting for such people. Since the media is itself part of the deep left it does not so much get targeted as does the targeting. But here we have a series of ads directed at the shallow and uninformed – in this case women young enough to be voting for the first time. The world is crashing around our heads, the economy is ruining their very own futures, foreign relations are in massive disrepair with a genuinely misogynist jihad on the rise. But in the US young women are being asked to vote on the narrowest imaginable series of issues that are in no way whatsoever under any likelihood to be changed irrespective of who is elected president, these being the availability of free birth control and abortion virtually on demand.

But never mind all that. What I am raising here is a matter for national pride. These are ads that have had their origin right here in Australia. We have been able to influence such giants in the world as Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama. And if you would like to see the full details of the genealogy of this descent from SH-Y to BHO perhaps via VP, you can read the full article here at Quadrant Online.

Your first time – in sequence

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It’s not often an Australian innovation will conquer the world especially in politics but we do seem to have had a first. Many in America are giving the laurel to Vladimir Putin but unless there is a more ancient contender, the true innovator was our own Sarah Hanson-Young. And the innovation is to have been the first to come up with the idea of your first vote as a woman equivalent to your first experience of making love. A pathetic disgusting idea, it is true, but SH-Y may have provided an Australian first. So let’s begin here with an ad put out by the Greens in the 2010 Australian election.

Revolting and repulsive it may be but let us be fair. It was also fresh and new, and so far as we know had never been tried before. It was also written by a pair of blokes who are named at the end, Mike Clay & Tyler Freeman-Smith. You have to wonder about the “gender” of the writers of the scripts for the other presentations now found below, or perhaps you don’t.

But never mind. Let’s move forward to the next in the sequence, an ad that was run this year and posted on Youtube in February 2012. It is an ad for Vladimir Putin and was run as part of the Russian election campaign. I cannot vouch for the Russian but the idea is unmistakeably the same.

I like the touch with the fortune teller. Who else would you go to for election advice?
And the Tarot card with Putin’s picture is a piece of genius. It is good to see such deep thought and consideration having gone into making so momentous a decision.

But now we have a version of this already twice warmed election idea being released by Obama in the United States. The same conception as in the ads by SH-Y and Putin but now designed for an American audience. The star is a young actress who would apparently be recognisable amongst her own demographic cohort. She is 26 so its been three election cycles since the first time she had personally cast a ballot assuming she voted in 2004 and 2008. But I guess the first time for something so important is hard to forget, although the kinds of thoughts she brings to the argument wouldn’t have had much relevance back when John Kerry was running for president. But let’s not worry about logic. This is about something far more transcendent.

So there you are. From Sarah Hanson-Young to Vladimir Putin to Barack Obama. That is, from the Australian Greens to the former head of the KGB to the Democrat president of the United States. An Australian innovation in how to guide young girls into the right way to vote for the first time. I would think these ads are making fun of young girls and tries to make them look like a bunch of simpletons, but what do I know? It’s an idea Made in Australia. Makes you proud to be an Australian.

Julia Gillard as modern as 1969

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This is a bit of retro picked up from Instapundit but which has a lot more resonance here. It is the latest idea in telecommunications, at least it was in 1969, to wire every house and connect them through cable. This is the text that goes with the video:

“Supposing that every house were linked to the communication network via a wideband coaxial cable,” asks a forward-thinking member of the Post Office Research Station in Dollis Hill, London at the beginning of this 1969 short film titled, “Telecommunication Services for the 1990s.”

Made in 1969 at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, this eight minute film attempts to predict what the future of communications may be like.

We are governed by idiots who think they are forward looking geniuses but are repeating the same vision that might have been fresh in 1969 but is today beyond stale. And they are expensive to keep as well, but whose fault is it but our own for putting these people into office?

Obama leads Romney 68-7 – in Australia

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In a poll undertaken by the BBC, Australia comes second just after France as the country that prefers Obama to Romney by a staggering 68% to around 7%. I must tell you I find this astonishing, especially in a country that has largely seen through Gillard and the ALP. Here is the graph with the numbers.

This can only be explained by the media wall of silence that has prevented even a glimmer of good news about Romney from to filter through to the population in general. But there must be more to it than that since the Australian results are almost identical to the Canadian and if nothing else, a Canadian is closer to the US than we are and ought to know better. On the other hand, Fox News is banned in Canada which would leave the Canadian public even more exposed to the journalistic biases of the CBC and the rest which are no better than anywhere else. And the Canadians like the British think they have the best medical care system in the world which they like because it is free. That’ll get ’em every time.

The following shows the same data in order of where Romney is preferred. He is the preferred candidate nowhere, except in the US which is all that matters. But for there to be virtually no appreciation of Romney anywhere in the world, and a preference for Obama, is quite surprising. I do note, however, that Israel was left off the list which I think of as unsurprising given the left attitudes of the BBC, but it is an omission of quite some importance. Leaving the survey as it is makes it seem that the entire world is of the same view, but including what I think would be the likely outcome in Israel would, if published, perhaps have a positive effect on Romney’s vote.

The country in which Romney does best turns out to be Kenya which has an irony all its own, and the only country in which Romney leads Obama is Pakistan though the numbers could not in anyway be interpreted as a show of support.

Republicans better informed than Democrats and it’s not even close

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These are the latest results of a Pew Research Poll that had previously shown a lesser gap but still a very decided gap between Republicans and Democrats. The gap is growing and in fact, according to the latest survey the difference is astonishing:

Republicans generally outperformed Democrats on the current quiz. On 13 of the 19 questions, Republicans score significantly higher than Democrats and there are no questions on which Democrats did better than Republicans. In past knowledge quizzes, partisan differences have been more muted, though Republicans often have scored somewhat higher than Democrats.

And part of the reason the gap is growing is because as people break through the media blockade and find things out for themselves, they abandon the Democrats where only the least informed remain. I suspect the same is here with Libs versus the ALP.

Source for these results: Some interesting investigation in the comments with the source of these results now tracked down by Cold-Hands to a survey conducted in October 2011. The quotation is, however, exactly as it was printed in the Pew Survey so unless there has been some massive change in their knowledge base, the conclusions are exactly as stated above.

The deadening of free speech in Australia continues

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There are two discussions of the threat to free speech here in Australia by two old friends of this country. Both look at the treatment of Alan Jones and the way in which he had been sanctioned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority for comments he made about climate change. Both find it bizarre that ACMA has now become a fact checker on climate science. Weird world!

The first is from James Delingpole. He begins by going through the story of Andrew Bolt and then the Finkelstein Report and now adds that as dead as freedom of speech was becoming in Australia, “Freedom of speech is even deader in Australia” than it had been before.

Now to this list of shame we can add a third item of gob-smacking imbecility: the consignment of Australia’s most popular broadcaster, Alan Jones, to a political re-education class for having got a factual detail wrong on one of his radio shows.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority yesterday released a damning report on Jones’ show, finding he breached broadcast rules by falsely claiming Australians contributed just ‘1 per cent of .001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air’.

‘The percentage of man-made carbon dioxide Australia produces is 1 per cent of .001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air,’ Jones told his listeners on March 15 last year. ‘Nature produces nearly all the carbon dioxide in the air.’

2GB told the media regulator Jones had done his own research for the claims, but neither he nor the station could provide any evidence.

University of Melbourne climate change scientist David Karoly said Australians were in fact responsible for .45 per cent of total carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. ‘Obviously, we would much rather prefer that the comments of people like Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt were, in fact, correct, so it is pleasing to get this ruling from ACMA,’ Dr Karoly said.

The second commentary is from Mark Steyn:

Down Under, something called the ‘Australian Communications and Media Authority’ (that’s to say, the usual bunch of statist hacks) has just ordered Alan Jones, the country’s Number One morning man, to undergo ‘factual accuracy training’ (that’s to say, re-education camp) for saying the following:

’The percentage of man-made carbon dioxide Australia produces is 1 per cent of .001 per cent of carbon dioxide in the air,’ Jones told his listeners on March 15 last year. ‘Nature produces nearly all the carbon dioxide in the air.’

Apparently, according to a global warm-monger of dubious provenance himself, the correct figure is 0.45 per cent. So the percentage of non-Australian carbon dioxide in the air is 99.55 per cent rather than 99.99999 per cent. For this outrageous crime, Alan Jones must report for ‘factual accuracy training’.

They’re laughing at us, and so they should. But it’s not really a laughing matter. Steyn concludes:

The death of free speech doesn’t seem immediately relevant to people worried about jobs and mortgages, but it is: When it’s a crime to be skeptical of ‘climate change’ alarmism, it’s harder to object to the diversion of tax dollars from you and yours to Solyndra and other ‘green’ boondoggles. Killing freedom of expression renders honest discussion of everything from the economy to foreign policy all but impossible – which suits both the left and Islam just fine.

If Australia keeps this nonsense up, I may have to come back for another nationwide tour. If they let me in.

Why when I see such stories of organisations such as ACMA do I think of the Salem Witch Trials, an analogy that for many of these smug, self-satisfied witch hunting ignoramuses would seem completely far fetched? But they and their supporters are the enemies of not just free speech but of freedom itself, not us but them.

Who is this person to lecture anyone about anything!

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This is how Peter Smith starts his article, “Loud, low and thoroughly loathsome”, which you may find at Quadrant Online:

I hadn’t seen Julia Gillard’s ‘misogyny’ speech, just read about it. I thought I better see it for myself. You have to actually see it to understand the bile that she spewed out. It was vituperative; it personified the ugliest face of human nature. I felt strangely diminished and degraded when it was finished. It was beyond disgraceful, even taking into account the grossest of insults and invective that have been hurled in the past across the parliamentary chambers. It had no redeeming feature, no moment of common humanity. She demeaned the high office of prime minister.

Well, to be honest, I hadn’t seen it either but I have now. I would put it up for anyone in the fortunate position of also never having heard this rant before but if you’ve read about it that should be plenty good enough. But it was extraordinary and if people in her vacinity are found looking at their watch, I am not surprised. My approach is to dive for the remote as soon as the PM comes on the set, but obviously if you are in Parliament or sitting with her at dinner these are options not open at the time. But as I think of this government, so they think of sitting and listening to her. Will this never end?

So here it is, Prime Minister. We need your help. Please lay out for the rest of us exactly in what way it is appropriate to say to you that we think you are wrecking the country with your economic policies, wasteful public expenditure, rising levels of debt, absence of border protection, carbon and mining taxes and everything else. Since you appear to take these criticisms as a reflection of our dyed-in-the-wool misogyny, please provide instructions for us so that we can do it in a way that:

(a) makes it clear why we think your government is the worst government in Australian history

BUT

(b) does it in a way that does not make you think we are saying it because you are a woman.

A tricky one, I can see, since you never seem to be able to make this distinction. But if you put together an impartial committee of some sort – let me suggest Plibersek, Roxon and Milne – we could get to the bottom of this. Here is something you could actually do that might assist us out here in getting through to you why we think in the way we do.

Back pedalling on misogyny at the Australian Feminist Review

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As I noted yesterday, the AFR ran a number of articles on misogyny particularly one by Susan Sheridan. It seems that piece must have been a step too far. Here is an editorial that says much the same as I did although not quite in the same sort of way. And I must say I am happy to find that there still is a step that is too far.

Dr Sheridan, an adjunct professor in English and women’s studies at Flinders University, argues that Mr Abbott is a misogynist because he inhabits and reflects a culture “with a long tradition of hatred and fear of women”. She claims even women who do not consciously resist our modern society’s long tradition of sexism may speak and act in ways that are misogynist. This type of feminist fundamentalism bears similarities to other fundamentalist ideologies including Marxism, green environmentalism and religious fanaticism, all of which draw on notions of oppression and hierarchical power structures that jar with the reality of our modern pluralist culture.

Dr Sheridan’s suggestion that even women can unconsciously act and speak in a misogynist manner harks back to the Marxist idea of “false consciousness”, whereby even the consuming middle classes don’t understand they are being oppressed. The proletariat may have been “oppressed” in the early industrial revolution that prompted Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to publish The Communist Manifesto in 1848. Rather than revolting, however, the working class has long ago mostly morphed into a prosperous middle class that itself increasingly owns the means of production. As Paul Keating notes, Labor has failed to embrace the aspirational class that its own economic reforms encouraged in the 1980s.

Australian Feminist Review

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Reading the Australian Feminist Review (AFR for short) and there are four – count them – four articles on misogyny. To me it seems to reveal a certain state of mind. The dread dangers of misogyny are being displayed across the paper:

on page 2: “MacMisogyny with fries” by Jennifer Hewitt;

on page 3: “Defining moment in war of words” by Gemma Daley;

on page 67 “Rural blokes lap up Julia’s bit of biffo” by former Labor Senator John Black;

and the pièce de résistance, on page 66 “The ugliness of misogyny” by Susan Sheridan.

The killer quote from Ms Sheridan, taken from Germaine Greer, is this:

Women have very little idea how much men hate them.

No man I have ever known has expressed nor shown a hatred of women, not ever. But in discussing over the past week this business about misogyny with quite a number of women of my acquaintance, the amazing part is that what is much closer to reality is this:

Men have very little idea how much women hate them.

Sheridan equates misogyny with racism – “the parallel with racism is clear” – and calls Tony Abbott a misogynist, in her eyes a completely damning characterisation. And why is he so? Because all men are equally guilty of this same crime:

Because he inhabits a culture with a long tradition of hatred and fear of women – and he reflects that culture. He mirrors it, as Prime Minister Julia Gillard so rightly said.

Of course, the parallel with racism is complete nonsense. Men and women live together, raise children together and have daughters for whom their fathers want to ensure the finest possible outcomes that they can assist in bringing about. Not much of a parallel with Nazis and Jews, is it?

My thanks to the AFR for bringing these views to our attention.

How behind the times our PM is: Just found this from The Daily Express Online. The title is “Feminism is over . . . say women”. Here is the most interesting passage especially given Ms Sheridan’s views:

FEMINISM in the modern world is viewed as outdated and aggressive and is being shunned by women, research has found. . . .

They believe single mother turned multi-millionaire author JK Rowling is a better example of a strong independent role model than feminist icon Germaine Greer.

In fact, almost a third (28 per cent) of British women describe the radical feminism of Ms Greer as ‘too aggressive’ towards men and a quarter no longer view it as a positive label for women.

Poisoning the political debate

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My posting below, Dealing with the ideologically deaf has now been posted at Quadrant on Line under the lovely title, Gillard’s Feminine Mystique.

Because there is not a single policy or decision that has not turned absolutely sour on her causing the polls to indicate a Labor wipeout at the next election, she has decided to scrape the bottom of the political barrel by arguing that the Leader of the Opposition is not merely a sexist – that is, someone who believes women are different from men and for that reason might take different roles in society – but is a full flown misogynist – an actual hater of women and womankind. She is thus poisoning political debate by dragging in arguments which aside from being beside the point on every major issue of significance at the moment, are also absolutely untrue. That she cannot distinguish between:

(a) I don’t like your policies
(b) I don’t like you because of what you stand for, and
(c) I don’t like you because you are woman

is merely par for the course given how obtuse she has shown herself to be in every other regard. By invoking (c) when what is being said is (a) is, moreover, destructive of politics and political debate, creating animosities where none had existed before. Pandering to the worst instincts and dredging up the badge of victimhood merely for her own political advantage, she is debasing our politics and making Australia a worse place than it was. But it is a reminder just how out of her depth she is adding another example of how destructive she has been to our social peace.

My article at Quadrant Online deals with Gillard burrowing into this pile of dirt because for her it is the only answer she has to the criticisms she so rightly receives. Since Little Miss Perfect cannot believe she is personally at fault about anything, the flaw must lie within her critics. That is what my article tries to say. Here is one para and you can go to QoL if you would like to read the rest:

For someone such as myself, who felt as strongly and positively about Margaret Thatcher as I did about Ronald Reagan, the notion that behind my disgust at the policies of such as astonishingly incompetent Prime Minister as Gillard has proven to be are attitudes based on her sex is both insulting and ridiculous. But for her such beliefs are a talisman that protects her from every criticism since she never has to take them seriously because to her they are based on biological facts on not on her personal incompetence.

Or to put it differently, if she hadn’t run up the deficit why producing nothing worthwhile, created an immense debt where none had existed before, fatally weakened our border protections by dismantling the system that had been carefully put in place by John Howard, brought in a carbon tax after promising in the week before the election that she would not, introduced the NBN that is likely to make our communications system far worse than if she had merely left it alone, and now intends to direct the media so that she will not have to read criticisms of her policies over the Weetbix in the morning, I might have had a different view of both her policies and her persona. But if she believes that either Tony Abbott or anyone else would have been happy had a male done all of this instead, then she is exactly as dense as I actually think she is.