Headline of the Week

WAtoday 27 February 2015

New Australian Health Minister Sussan Ley demonstrates she has as big a tin ear as her prime minister

Readers of The Australian newspaper on 21 February 2015 could be forgiven for wondering who was going to find themselves on receiving end of her 'examination' - the medical profession or bulk-billed patients.

The minister will see you now: Sussan Ley. Picture: Nick Cubbin Source: News Corp Australia

Tony Abbott fails to understand the nature of violence against women according to campaigner

Excerpt from The Age article Tony Abbott fundamentally misunderstands the violence against women epidemic by Phil Cleary on 16 February 2014:

Political life might look profoundly different for Tony Abbott had he not stood smiling in front of those misogynist banners "Ditch the Witch" and "Julia – Bob Browns (sic) Bitch" during his push to become Australia's 28th prime minister. Imagine if he'd shown genuine leadership and courage and torn asunder the hatred of women that bristled in those banners. Instead, he and Bronwyn Bishop revelled in the attention while campaigners against the epidemic of violence wondered how he could not grasp the deeper significance of his complicity in the banners.

Had Abbott not lent his name to words that mimicked the tawdry courtroom depictions of murdered wives as bitches and witches, maybe his creation of an advisory panel on family violence would have looked like the actions of a genuine prime minister. Instead, in the absence of a documented passion for the anti-violence cause, his announcement of such a panel reeks of opportunism in the face of the opprobrium that flowed from his knighting of Prince Philip. Without as much as talking to the campaigners, the Prime Minister created a panel then offered not an original thought about the extent of the violence against women, its origins, or how we as a society might begin to deal with it.

Don't get me wrong. The former Victoria chief commissioner of police, Ken Lay, is a passionate and admired campaigner against the violence. And the symbolism of Rosie Batty's appointment, along with her experience with the institutions entrusted with the task of protecting women and children, will be invaluable.

But what's the point of an advisory panel if you're up to your neck in cuts to the funding of frontline services crucial to the safety of women? If only Abbott had committed funds to fortify and extend those services, rather than promise an unpopular, hugely expensive paid parental leave policy (now thankfully shelved). If only he'd promised to sweep away the platitudes and address the inconvenient truth that it is violence against women by men that is our problem, and that the murder of Luke Batty was an act of male revenge against a woman, as was Robert Farquharson driving his three sons into a dam in 2005 and Arthur Freeman throwing his 4-year-old daughter, Darcey, off the Westgate Bridge in 2009……

The sad truth is that we don't regard the life of a murdered wife as being as valuable as that of a child. When a child is murdered by their father, it is invariably described as an inexplicable act and the source of unimaginable pain, as if the loss of a woman to a man who claims to love her isn't equally as painful for her parents. Children are always innocent, whereas too often a murdered wife must run the gauntlet of guilt.

Faced with the opportunity to expose these contradictions and the hypocrisy, and to stare down the attitudes that have fostered the killing of women, Tony Abbott has failed to deliver the appropriate leadership. After 25 years of campaigning, I'm not interested – nor are the campaigners I speak with – in politicians or commentators who camouflage the origins of the violence, disregard the lessons of the campaign, or won't say that the problem is men. Rather than inspiring me, Abbott's decision to create an advisory panel on family violence left me believing he didn't understand the nature of the violence stalking modern women. It is just one more reason his leadership of the country is under threat.

We've come a long way since the days when violence against women was regarded as secret men's business. So far have we come that it is now politically acceptable to select the mother of a boy killed by his father as Australian of the Year. Unfortunately, like so many times in his recent political career, Tony Abbott did not seize the moment. How different it might have looked had he said he would not and could not entertain those who blame the Family Court, or mothers, for the violence of a vengeful father. If only he'd stated that it is "un-Australian" to kill your wife. If only he'd posed for a photo with the parents or siblings of women murdered by an estranged man, especially those devastated by the misogynist provocation law or the failed defensive homicide law in Victoria.

Like so many campaigners, I long for the day when the murder of 60 women a year by intimate partners, estranged or current, produces the same sorrow and outrage from a prime minister and his opposition counterpart as does the killing of a child – and inspires a condolence motion in Parliament of the kind moved for the victims in the Martin Place siege. For that day will truly mark the beginning of the end for the wife killers and bashers.

MUUUM! He's doing that thing with the hair again!

Tony Abbott's changing hairline is not just a reflection of male vanity but may also be a barometer for his level of personal insecurity.

This is Tony Abbott in I don't give a damn mode:

This is Tony Abbott putting his best foot forward during a bad week in Canberra. The tonsorial comb over was on both sides of his part on 26 February 2015 and the 'hair product' he admits to occasionally using appears to have darkened his bald patch again:

Australia’s international standing sinks to a new low under Prime Minister Tony Abbott

The United Nations reacts.

International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights (ICC) letter to Prime Minister Tony Abbott concerning his government's treatment of the President of the Australian Human Right Commission, Prof. Gillian Triggs.

This letter was copied to the United Nations Commissioner of Human Rights.

International Coordinating Committee of National Institutions for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rig...

http://www.ishr.ch/sites/default/files/article/files/the_prime_minister_of_australia.pdf

On 26 February 2015 the ICC Chairperson spoke to ABC News Radio about his letter to Prime Minister Abbott and expressed his concerns about the federal government's treatment of the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission. 

The next ICC Bureau Meeting will take place on 11 March 2015 at the United Nations Palais de Nations in Geneva and, I suspect that the Australian Government will be discussed at some point.

Rolf Harris finally relieved of his Australian honours

Almost four months after losing his application to appeal twelve sexual assault convictions, Rolf Harris loses his Australian hounours:
http://www.comlaw.gov.au/Details/C2015G0026

In Abbott's Australia it's all about protecting those who 'have' and knocking the 'have nots' into the gutter

The Daily Telegraph 22 February 2015:

A SECRET plan to kick millionaires off the aged pension was shelved by the Abbott Government’s budget razor gang in favour of slashing the indexation of payments for every pensioner in Australia.

The Sunday Telegraph can reveal that cabinet’s budget razor gang was asked to consider reforms to slash pension payments to wealthy seniors last year by changing the taper rate.

In another stunning leak from the nation’s most powerful cabinet committee, senior ministers have confirmed they agonised that the Prime Minister would be accused of kicking seniors off the pension and breaking a clear election promise not to cut pensions.

Instead, Treasury proposed a change to the indexation arrangements for all pensioners _ meaning the rate of increase would effectively be slowed _ from 2017….

The indexation change was announced in the May budget. Welfare groups and Labor argue it will cut pensions by $80 a week within 10 years. According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, this amounts to a $23 billion cut to the cost of the age pension by 2023.

For the first time, Liberal sources have revealed the indexation cut was not the preferred option of former Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews.

Mr Andrews had instead proposed a targeted cut that would only hurt wealthy seniors.

His preferred solution was to change the taper rate to withdraw pension payments faster from wealthy seniors with investment properties and investment income. The family home would have remained exempt from the pensions asset test.

Over time, this would have helped slow the growth of the large numbers of asset-rich Australians who claim the age pension.

This proposal would have reversed the 2006 decision by the Howard Government which brought more higher income seniors into Australia’s aged pension system by easing the taper rates….

The Audit Commission report also suggested a similar reform to the taper rate, suggesting it be increased to withdraw benefits at the rate for 75 per cent the dollar after pensioners reached an income threshold. Currently, the rate is 50 cents in the dollar.

SuperGuide 22 September 2014:

The UPPER asset thresholds for the Age Pension assets test increased again on 20 September 2014, which means more Australians may now be eligible for a PART Age Pension

By way of example, this means Abbott & Co decided that a single person over 65 years of age with no dependents, owning a $1 million+ home on up to 2 hectares of land, who has $770,000 in other assets producing an income of $900 per fortnight, will still receive pension and energy supplements with a combined worth of over $2,000 per annum – while a single person over 65 years of age with no dependents, owning no property, having no other assets, will see the value of the aged pension he/she receives reduced by an est. $416 per annum in 2017 (increasing to est. $4,160 per annum by 2025) due to the Abbott Government changes to pension indexation.

Yes, in Abbott’s Australia it’s all about protecting those who have and knocking the have nots into the gutter.