Stop. Think. Respect.

http://youtu.be/MvTyI41PvTk

The Abbott 'Christian' Mafia Strikes Again

Sex workers, table-top dancers, strippers – possibly even artists’ models – are being discriminated against under this Abbott Government policy.

The Australian 7 August 2014:

Sex workers and table-top dancers who lose their jobs will not be eligible for a reduction in the number of months they have to wait before they can get the dole, sparking accusations the Abbott government is imposing moral judgments on the social welfare system.

Even unemployed people who claim they have worked by running for public office will have to wait longer than others to get the Newstart Allowance.

Welfare Rights has written a submission to the government, declaring its outrage at the “moral judgments” being made in new rules.

Other concerns raised by Welfare Rights in its submission include new rules that make unemployed people spend their savings — before the six-month waiting period for the dole even begins. Welfare Rights says the treatment of the Liquid Assets Waiting Period (LAWP) is particularly unfair.

Under changes unveiled in the May budget, those younger than 30 will be cut off the dole for six months. If they enrol in a course, they can apply for a lower welfare payment to study.

The waiting period for New­start will reduce depending on past employment. The reduction will be a month for every year of prior work, except for school leavers; otherwise no income support will be provided. Part-time employment would also be recognised on a pro-rata basis.

In the explanatory memorandum for the bill circulated by Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews, the waiting period for “gainful work” would operate differently for different categories of work.

“Gainful work is defined to mean any work for financial gain or reward,” it says. “As examples, the minister could provide that particular kinds of gainful work do not cause a reduced waiting period if the work: does not involve a substantial degree of consistent personal exertion; consists of domestic or gardening tasks in relation to the place of residence of the person or a member of their family; consists of the management of financial investments in which the person or a member of their family has an interest; involves nudity or is in the sex industry; or is for the purpose of achieving election of the person to public office.”

Liberal Party member and Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) research fellow outed for crude tweets

The Australian 1 August 2014:

Not happy, Mr. Shorten!

In 2003 The Howard Government introduced the Business Services Wage Assessment Tool (BSWAT) which determines the level of wages paid to people with disabilities who are employed in Commonwealth-funded Australian Disability Enterprises [ADEs].

On 21 December 2012 the Full Federal Court found that the test of competency in the BSWAT discriminated against people with an intellectual disability.

In September 2013 the Dept. of Social Security sought an exemption from the Australian Human Rights Commission to continue to use the BSWAT. A limited  exemption for a twelve month period was granted, subject to provisions.

According to the Commission an estimated 10,000 individuals with an intellectual disability have their wages assessed under the BSWAT scheme.

In January 2014 ABC News reported that the Abbott Government announced that it would make a one-off payment to intellectually disabled workers who had been unfairly paid - but only if they were not involved in the discrimination class action which was scheduled for a first directions hearing in February.

On 10 May 2014 the Abbott Government was refused leave to appeal the Federal Court judgment.

On 17 June 2014 the Abbott Government’s Business Services Wage Assessment Tool Payment Scheme (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2014 was passed in the House of Representatives with the support of the Opposition. This bill offers for a limited period to enter into individual agreements to pay half of the lost wages owed to any affected ADE worker with an intellectual disability.

Lawyers running a class action on behalf of supported employees with intellectual disabilities have described this legislation as "an outrageous abuse of power".

Given that ADEs pay workers with an intellectual disability as little as $0.33 per hour and given that it appears the government bill locks out any of 10,000 workers taking part in the class action from receiving the half of lost wages ‘offer’ and, will see the future wages of those workers (who receive compensation for past wage discrimination if the class action is successful) cut by about half, I am amazed that Federal Labor would endorse this legislation.

I always wondered why so few charity collectors knocked on my front door

I’m a POYSN! A poison person living in one of those "poor, old, young, stupid and non-english speaking" households.

So it’s been other people’s bigotry which has kept me safe from unwanted solicitations via phone or doorstep.
A big thankyou to the Legacy Marketing Team, David, Chris and Amanda!
Ain’t life grand?

Mart

Lismore

* GuestSpeak is a feature of North Coast Voices allowing Northern Rivers residents to make satirical or serious comment on issues that concern them. Posts of 250-300 words or less can be submitted to ncvguestspeak AT gmail.com.au for consideration.

Il Papa speaking in doomsday code in 2012

CODE:

“Among these, pride of place goes to the family, based on the marriage of a man and a woman. This is not a simple social convention, but rather the fundamental cell of every society. Consequently, policies which undermine the family threaten human dignity and the future of humanity itself.”

TRANSLATION:

Gay marriage = Armageddon.

Oi, Bennie! A gay couple saying “I do” is not about to stop babies being born by the millions, cause ethnic genocide or result in mass extinction of the human species.

Stirrup the bitch! Why the medical experience is still a feminist issue

Because women as a group are constantly being told “You’ve come a long way”  when compared with their grandmothers, it is easy to overlook the fact that misogyny and chauvinism are still slyly woven into much of the female experience in developed countries like Australia.

So it is often only cases such as this which draw any mention in the mainstream media of the fact that the medical experience is frequently one fraught with the risk of physical and/or psychological damage for many females.

The Northern Star Rogue obstetrician faces 15 counts of abuse, malpractice by Natasha Wallace 13 December 2011

She alleged he forcefully put his hand on her vagina

and said, ''Who is the boss now?''

Read the rest here

Terror Nullius: From Howard to Gillard

Excerpts from EVIDENCE-FREE POLICY MAKING? THE CASE OF INCOME MANAGEMENT by Eva Cox* in The Journal of Indigenous Policy – Issue 12

The 2007 introduction of the Northern Territory Emergency Response (NTER) was the result of an odd amalgamation: an  exposé' on the ABC's Lateline program, prejudice against Aboriginal communities, an upcoming election and the need to look decisive. They had some bureaucrats with outdated proposals for paternalistic control of welfare recipients dating back to the 1990s, when policy changes in the UK and USA undermined the right to welfare entitlements that had been part of the post-war welfare state.

There's not a single action that the Commonwealth has taken so far that … corresponds with a single recommendation. There is no relationship between these emergency powers and what's in our report.'

There are many large gaps between available evidence and the corresponding decisions, and this set of legislative changes exemplified the need in a democracy for those aware of the risks and damage to point out the problems and be heard. Many groups giving evidence to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee9 and participating in the consultations cast doubt on the income management program, but the Government officials had already made up their minds and took notice only of what supported their conclusions. Our review shows how counterevidence was manipulated, ignored and misused, suggesting that decision makers had already decided on their course of action before ‗consultation processes' or evidence taking began.

Given this wealth of information that has not been considered appropriately, this issue of the Journal argues that the Government is failing to meet its own stated standards for use of evidence in policy-making and often ignores its own advisers' views of what is good policy and what works. In this case, there is an additional twist as the income management policy appears to have been used for wider political purposes such as major changes to income support policy.

The (government) press release fails to mention that the government research cited was based on the opinions of individuals rather than on objective data.

We are the co-authors of a study published today in the Medical Journal of Australia, which shows that the federal government's income management policy is not making an impact on tobacco and health food sales in remote community shops in the NT. Smoking and poor diet are responsible for much of the health gap between indigenous and other Australians.

We are concerned that indigenous affairs minister Jenny Macklin has responded to our study by highlighting the results of the government's evaluation. She has told journalists that the government intends to press ahead with plans to roll out income management more broadly, and has appeared to dismiss our findings.

* Eva Cox is a sociologist who has taught research methods at two universities and has twice run her own research consultancy. She has also worked with politicians and in senior public service positions and has engaged in policy making, evaluation, advocacy and bureaucratic implementation of programs. She delivered the 1995 ABC Boyer lectures on A Truly Civil Society. She is currently a Research Fellow at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning at the University of Technology, Sydney

Terror Nullius 2
Acrylic, oil, ochre and charcoal from the Finke Rivr on wood
560mm x 410mm

O'Farrell Government dons its jackboots and strides forth

The O’Farrell Government seems intent on striding across the News South Wales landscape with the destructive intent of a blitzkrieg aktion and this time its blind rage against the notion of a fair go and an egalitarian society is directed at around 400,000 public sector workers.

This NSW government intends to reserve the sole right to itself of setting wages and conditions in this sector:

Industrial Relations Amendment (Public Sector Conditions of Employment) Bill 2011 [Member with Carriage: Pearce, Gregory Notice of Motion: Tue 24 May 2011 Introduced: Tue 24 May 2011 First Reading: Tue 24 May 2011 Ministers 2R Speech: Tue 24 May 2011]

146C Commission to give effect to certain aspects of government policy on public sector employment

(1) The Commission must, when making or varying any award or order, give effect to any policy on conditions of employment of public sector employees:

(a) that is declared by the regulations to be an aspect of government policy that is required to be given effect to by the Commission, and

(b) that applies to the matter to which the award or order relates.

(2) Any such regulation may declare a policy by setting out the policy in the regulation or by adopting a policy set out in a relevant document referred to in the regulation.

(3) An award or order of the Commission does not have effect to the extent that it is inconsistent with the obligation of the Commission under this section.

(4) This section extends to appeals or references to the Full Bench of the Commission.

(5) This section does not apply to the Commission in Court Session.

(6) This section extends to proceedings that are pending in the Commission on the commencement of this section. A regulation made under this section extends to proceedings that are pending in the Commission on the commencement of the regulation, unless the regulation otherwise provides.

(7) This section has effect despite section 10 or 146 or any other provision of this or any other Act.

In defence of free speech and the rights of First Peoples

On 8 April 2011 North Coast Voices embedded a Vimeo video made by the Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation here on our blog.

Since then Crikey has published this:
Lawyers representing Fortescue Metal Group (FMG) and CEO Andrew Forrest have sent legal letters to a video hosting website requesting they take down a controversial clip of a native title meeting held in Roebourne last month despite issuing a denial to Crikey yesterday that they'd been in touch with Vimeo.
In an email from FMG's legal team to Vimeo, Fortescue say the video is defamatory, misleading, "incites racial hatred" and is "designed to intimidate."
Uploaded by Yindjibarndi Aboriginal Corporation, the video attracted 12,000 plays in nine days before being removed on Tuesday by the New York-based video hosting site in response to the threats.
The video has since been uploaded to YouTube and has been the subject of heated discussion on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook.
A spokesperson for Vimeo confirmed that the videos had been taken down for legal reasons. Fortescue spokesman Cameron Morse told Crikey yesterday his company had not had any contact with Vimeo about the controversial video. When contacted by Crikey this morning, Morse declined to clarify his comments.
Michael Cheah, legal counsel representing Vimeo, says the video was removed after the hosting site received correspondence from lawyers for FMG and Forrest alleging that the video contained defamatory and misleading statements about them.

So in the interests of free speech, North Coast Voices again embeds the video - this time in two parts from YouTube.





YINDJIBARNDI PRESS RELEASE: Vimeo forced to delete “FMG’s Great Native Title Swindle” video after legal threats from FMG and CEO Andrew Forrest.

The more things change the more they stay the same when it comes to gender inequality

It would be comfortable to say “Could only happen in America” when reading this study, which indicates that it is not only developing countries which favour male children. However one cannot escape the thought that the finding of this study might easily be mirrored in Australia.

Do parents have preferences over the gender of their children, and if so, does this have negative consequences for daughters versus sons? In this paper, we show that child gender affects the maritalstatus, family structure, and fertility of a significant number of American families. Overall, a first-born daughter is significantly less likely to be living with her father compared to a first-born son. Three factors are important in explaining this gap. First, women with first-born daughters are less likely to marry. Strikingly, we also find evidence that the gender of a child in utero affects shotgun marriages. Among women who have taken an ultrasound test during pregnancy, mothers who have a girl are less likely to be married at delivery than those who have a boy. Second, parents who have first-born girls are significantly more likely to be divorced. Third, after a divorce, fathers are much more likely to obtain custody of sons compared to daughters. These three factors have serious negative income and educational consequencesfor affected children. What explains these findings? In the last part of the paper, we turn to the relationship between child gender and fertility to help sort out parental gender bias from competing explanations for our findings. We show that the number of children is significantly higher in families with a first-born girl. Our estimates indicate that first-born daughters caused approximately 5500 more births per year, for atotal of 220,000 more births over the past 40 years. Taken individually, each piece of empirical evidence is not sufficient to establish the existence of parental gender bias. But taken together, the weight of the evidence supports the notion that parents in the U .S. favour boys over girls…….Our findings are important for several reasons. First, regardless of how one interprets ourfindings on family structure and fertility, we show that child gender matters. The results on the educational and economic outcomes indicate that the negative effects on children living in families where the first-born child is a girl are substantial. While our findings indicate that some o fthe negative consequences of a first-born daughter affect younger siblings of both genders, girls are overall more likely to be exposed to these negative effects. Moreover, if there is evidence of parental sex bias in family living arrangements and fertility decisions, it may be indicative ofother ways in which parents treat boys and girls unequally. For example, even in families where the parents are married, parents who prefer boys may give less attention and nurturing to their daughters. They may also devote fewer financial resources to their education and health. In this sense, our results are related to the existing literature that documents an unequal intra-household allocation of resources. [The Demand for Sons, GORDON B. DAHL University of California, San Diego, and NBER and ENRICO MORETTI University of California, Berkeley, and NBER,2008]

Gillard finally honours her own words

Onya , gurl!

“THE federal government has bowed to union and community sector anger and signed back on to support equal pay for women.

A letter by Workplace Minister Chris Evans has changed a government submission to the equal pay test case being heard by Fair Work Australia.

A dispute erupted in the final sitting week of Parliament as unions and the Australian Council of Social Services accused the government of abandoning a deal to support the case covering 153,000, mostly women, community-sector workers.

The commonwealth provides half the sector's funding, and its original submission had said any pay rise awarded by the tribunal would lead to cuts to other government services, because it needed to bring the budget back to surplus.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard took personal offence at the ensuing backlash and ordered the problem be fixed.

{The Age on 14^th December 2010}

Something for New Sou' Welshies to think about as the year ends.....

I’m told that once-upon-a-time in regional New South Wales you could find yourself locked up in a secure mental health facility just on the say so of a family member backed up by the word of a GP who hadn’t actually seen or talked to you.
The only hope you had of getting out from under this form of domestic violence (if the trick cyclist on duty didn’t believe you) was to speak with the visiting magistrate.
Now it seems the bad old days are returning:
“You, or anyone in NSW, could be picked up by the police and held in detention for up to one month without any form of judicial review. This could happen at any time, even though you have committed no crime. These are not the latest draconian anti-terror laws nor are they laws targeting asylum seekers. This is a legal framework that is directed at you and me, or it will be if we are unlucky enough to occasionally suffer a severe mental illness…. The act places restrictions on psychiatrists' power. It says that "as soon as practicable" after someone is admitted involuntarily to hospital, their case must be heard by an independent umpire. Until June, the umpire was a magistrate who came to the hospital every week. The magistrate saw every patient who had been detained and psychiatrists had to justify that deprivation of liberty to the magistrate. In June though, the umpire became a lawyer from the Mental Health Review Tribunal and, instead of visiting the hospital, he or she started appearing by audiovisual link. Whereas patients detained in hospital would previously have an automatic review within a week or so, now that would not happen until they had been locked up three or four weeks. The words "as soon as practicable" were suddenly interpreted to mean "within about a month" and many patients would now be involuntarily admitted and eventually released without ever having their detention independently checked.”
Shame, Premier Keneally, Shame!

Australia 2010: When the welcome mat is never put out for you

SANE Australia has released the findings of a recent survey in Research Bulletin 12 Social inclusion and mental illness - hopefully in time to assist with mental health policy responses from the major parties contesting the Australian Federal Election on 21 August 2010:

"The survey was conducted in March-April 2010 using a convenience sample of 559 people who completed an anonymous questionnaire.

The most common diagnoses reported were depression (40%), bipolar disorder (22%), anxiety (13%), and schizophrenia (12%)........

Over 50% of respondents to the survey, however, reported that mental illness had cut short their education, and they had not been offered support to continue this later.....

Most respondents (75%) were Centrelink clients. Of these, two-thirds (66%) were dissatisfied with the help provided by Centrelink and the disability employment services to which they referred people. Centrelink staff often did not understand the impact of mental illness, it was reported.

Many employment service staff also had difficulty understanding the needs of clients with mental illness, or had unrealistic expectations of them.......

Over half of the respondents (52%) reported that they did not feel part of their local community. Many reported that they had been treated disrespectfully at some time because of their mental illness (42%).

A 'digital divide' was also identified. While 72% of the general population use the Internet from home to engage with others, only 47% of respondents reported being able to do this.......

In summary

Many people with a mental illness experience disruption of their education, and receive no support to resume this.

Centrelink and employment service staff are inadequately supported and trained to help people with a mental illness find work.

People with a mental illness often feel they are not part of their local community, and are not welcome there. They are also far less likely to be connected to others because of a lack of Internet access.

Most people with a mental illness do not know where to go for help regarding discrimination, or find the process unhelpful. While other groups in society are protected from vilification (on grounds of religion or culture, for example), this protection is unavailable to people with a disability.

The concept of a dysfunctional life and the national e-health database

Ever since medical doctors such as John D'Arcy first began to appear on television screens, be heard on radio and be quoted in print commenting on social, economic and political aspects of Australian life it became apparent that medicalisation of the media and everyday life was well underway in Australia.

All behaviour commonly thought of as unacceptable (and even some behaviours previously falling within 'normal' ranges) quickly became defined as some form of deviance, psychopathology or physical illness. Nevermore so than when applied to those without a large measure of social or political power ie., children and the poor, which had previously only suffered under moral labels such as "lazy" and "bad".

If you are under voting age or come from a socio-economic band found at the bottom of the pecking order then it is highly likely that many aspects of your life are now considered to be so dysfunctional that the state must step in to regulate your behaviour - as instanced by the Australian Government's staged national roll out of a scheme quarantining at least half of the fortnightly cash transfer amount received by certain welfare recipients.

That Australia was not alone in experiencing this domination by the world view of health professionals was obvious when one noticed that internationally this phenomena was being debated, including such issues as the cross-over between moral and medical explanations of criminal behaviour, the medicalisation of sleep and fads in diagnosis which saw some previously rare diagnoses cluster in ways that surprised many epidemiologists.

One only has to look at the increased incidence of multiple personality diagnoses (an estimated 10 per cent of the 1991 North American adult population had a DSM-III-R dissociative disorder of some kind) in the years since The Three Faces of Eve was first picked up by the world-wide media to realise that something may be amiss.

Much of this past discussion was confined to the halls of academia and often only broke free of those constraints via humour, instanced in the late 1980's by an early version of The Etiology and Treatment of Childhood which can now found on the Internet and, more recently by George Monbiot's A Modest Proposal for Tackling Youth.

In the current century this medicalisation of the human condition is so entrenched that some in the principal offending professions became a mite uncomfortable and now posit the theory that we are all to blame for this state of affairs:
Originally, the concept of medicalisation was strongly associated with medical dominance, involving the extension of medicine's jurisdiction over erstwhile 'normal' life events and experiences. More recently, however, this view of a docile lay populace, in thrall to expansionist medicine, has been challenged. Thus, as we enter a post-modern era, with increased concerns over risk and a decline in the trust of expert authority, many sociologists argue that the modern day 'consumer' of healthcare plays an active role in bringing about or resisting medicalisation.
However, this concern has not halted the inexorable march forward of this universal redefinition of life.

In 2010 it seems that children are being further defined by the concept of criminal behaviour and in June this impressively titled study was released by the British Home Office; Experimental statistics on victimisation of children aged 10 to 15: Findings from the British Crime Survey for the year ending December 2009, England and Wales.

This study seeks to define the following scenario as a crime in law:
At home, two siblings are playing and one of them deliberately smashes the other's toy.

Now before you start shaking your head or roaring with laughter (because after all everything is so normal and sane in your particular corner of the national garden) think about the ramifications of this penchant for defining so much of the human condition as deviance, dysfunction, congenital defect or criminal activity.

Think about what the Gillard Labor Government's e-health national database of all Australian citizens (privately endorsed by the Federal Coalition Opposition ) may actually permanently contain by way of label or opinion concerning your own health, lifestyle decisions and family dynamics.

These digital records will not only affect how you are viewed today and tomorrow by officialdom in all its many guises, they might also affect how competent the state deems you to be as you enter frail old-age and whether control of your assets/financial affairs are assumed by another.

Scared yet?

Lack of public facilities such as transport in rural and regional Oz

Last year the local community of ***** (name removed) buried young ****** (name removed).


***** hanged himself out of despair. Centrelink hounded him.

In order to pacify Centrelink ***** drove everywhere to find work, often in an unregistered vehicle as he had not the means to pay for registration.

Individuals like ***** end up driving, often without a licence, and more often in unregistered vehicles. The seeds of criminality begin this way, from despair.

Truth is, this is not an isolated incident.

Over to you Mr Rudd et al.

Source: Read this

Make your own schools league table for the NSW North Coast - everyone else is!

What with many newspapers already publishing regional school performance lists from the Rudd Government's My School website (and one coyly pretending that by creating tables containing only 6 high schools & 22 primary schools it wasn't giving a quick start to local schools league tables), we all might as well join in.
Here are links to official comparative information on many (but not all) NSW North Coast schools:

Clarence Valley Anglican School
Clarence Valley Anglican School, Clarenza campus
Grafton High School
Grafton Public School
St Mary's Primary School
Westlawn Public School
Bishop Druitt College
Casuarina Steiner School
Coffs Harbour Christian Community School - Coffs Harbour Campus
Coffs Harbour Public School
Coffs Harbour Senior College
John Paul College
Narranga Public School
Orara High School
St Augustine's Primary School
Tyalla Public School
Westlawn Public School
St Joseph's Primary School
Tweed Heads Public School
Afterlee Public School
Kyogle High School
Kyogle Public School
St Brigid's Primary School
Evans River Community School
Richmond Christian College
Biala Special School
St Joseph's Primary School
Ballina High School
Alstonville High School
Woodburn Public School
St Joseph's Primary School
Broadwater Public School
Cabbage Tree Island Public School
Wardell Public School
Coraki Public School
St Joseph's Primary School
Empire Vale Public School
Rous Public School
Wyrallah Public School
Tregeagle Public School
Emmanuel Anglican College
Ballina Public School
St Francis Xavier Primary School
Alstonville Public School
Alstonville High School
ALESCO Learning Centre - Northern Rivers, Lismore
Caniaba Public School
Lismore High School
Lismore Public School
Lismore South Public School
Modanville Public School
St Carthage's Primary School
St John's College Woodlawn
Trinity Catholic College
Wilson Park School
Wyrallah Road Public School
Vistara Primary School
Summerland Christian College
Blue Hills College
Modanville Public School
Caniaba Public School
Kadina High School
Richmond River High School
Goonellabah Public School
Wooli Public School

Update:
On 30th January The Sydney Morning Herald released PDF download files of an A-Z list of all NSW school scores and 2 league tables containing Top 50 NSW High Schools and Top 50 NSW Primary Schools.
According to these media-produced tables:
Cape Byron Rudolf Steiner School came in at an equal 49th in the reading skills section. Otherwise North Coast high schools just didn't rank highly in this particular league table.
Wilsons Creek Public School (Mullumbimby) came in an equal 9th in the reading skills section,Tweed Valley College 22nd, St Mary's Primary School (Belligen) 48th in the same section and that was the limit that our primary schools rated a mention in this league table.

End-of-life decision-making: a disturbing observation by the NSW Ombudsman

Click image to enlarge

Excerpt from NSW Ombudsman March 2008 submission to the Special Commission of Inquiry into Acute Care Services in NSW Hospitals.

Best blog quote of the month from Hexy

Hexy of Hexpletive guestposting over at Hoyden about Town about Andrew Bolt's nasty views in Andrew Bolt, Wajin-looking Koori, Aboriginality, and comments full of lies:

Oh, that's just magic. If Andrew Bolt can point to one single "full-blood Aborigine" with whom he has discussed this matter and who expressed that sentiment, I'll eat my hat. No, even more extreme… I'll f*ck Andrew Bolt...........

The only people who have ever expressed disbelief of my Aboriginality based on my skin tone have been over-privileged white f*ckwits who feel entitled to decide who does and does not get to claim membership of a demographic they themselves have no connection at all to. [letter substitutions to avoid those *#@ filters]

Hexy you are a joy to read.

Photo from Crikey

The True Blue Honour Roll of Academic Freedom

The Sydney Morning Herald published an article yesterday which had the Young Liberals demonstrating the depth of rigorous research that lies behind their finger-pointing before the 2008 Senate Inquiry into Academic Freedom and their listing of a number of 'bad' academics, when national president Noel McCoy pointed out that evidence for alleged teaching bias was basically found by Googling these same academics.

Because of that I was going to call this post; One man's Google or 4633 kilobytes that certain uni students will very likely be ashamed of when they reach retirement.

Then I clicked onto the Senate website and found this group's submission Make Education Fairer, dated 13 August 2008 .
One hundred and five PDF pages of the most malicious drivel I have read in quite some space of time.

Suddenly it wasn't so amusing anymore. This little witch hunt even named an entire university department in what boils down to charges of thought crimes against white, Anglo-Saxon males.

Especially jaw-dropping is the notion found in the submission that this excerpt is apparently considered a biased and unnatural aim:

2.1 1 Schooling should assist in overcoming inequalities between social groups, seeking to produce equal and high educational outcomes for all social groups.
[Australian Education Union, Curriculum Policy 2007]

I invite you to read it all here. Unfortunately at the time of posting this, the hearing transcripts were not up yet for 9 October 2008, when the Young Liberals presented their supposed evidence in person.

Those academics named in the Make Education Fairer submission deserve to be recognised and supported against such nonsense:

Wendy Bacon
Eva Cox
Peter Singer
Catharine Lumby

The entire Department of Critical and Cultural Studies at Macquarie University, including Doctors Anderson, Francis-Cranny, Lambert, Murray and Sullivan

Peter Manning
Sarah Maddison
Carol Johnson
Tom Bramble
Jamie Doughney
Carole Ferrier
Martin Hirst

Rick Kuhn

Georgina Murray
Damon Riggs
Anna Szorenyi

Kathleen Conellan

Alia Imtoual

et al