Minister for Defence Brendan Nelson has revealed the Army is planning to entice young Australians to ‘try before you buy’ the military experience during their gap year. Skeptics are already wondering if this move is a precursor to the reintroduction of national service.

Sapper Nelson of course dons his KEVLAR® and boldly charges forth to qualify the national service option as a last resort, only to have to once again rethink this government’s (and his) credibility…

“It would be extremely divisive in Australia, there would be a great fault line through Australian society. The only circumstance under which any government would seriously entertain national service or conscription is if there was a direct, immediate and credible military threat to Australia.” -Brendan Nelson 14:15 15/10/06.

“The Government has absolutely no intention at all of reintroducing national service or conscription” -Brendan Nelson 19:48 15/10/06.

I wonder if the speedy change of rhetoric had anything to do with somebody reminding Brendan of Downer’s credibility howler in 2004?

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A new study from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, which has been examined and validated by four separate independent experts and published in The Lancet reveals that around 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion of their country in 2003. This figure represents 2.5% of Iraq’s entire population.

As a country that joined the ‘coalition of the willing’ (a term that has been truncated to ‘the coalition’) we have to acknowledge these deaths. Our government, and the people that voted for HoWARd, have to take some responsibility for their complicity in this catastrophe.

Unsurprisingly, this most recent Iraqi death toll has raised skepticism with HoWARd as he feels the figures are too high. HoWARd seems to accept the more palatable ~50,000 Iraq body count figure.

“It’s (655,000 Iraqi deaths since 2003) not plausible. It’s not based on anything other than a house-to-house survey. I think that’s absolutely precarious. It is an unbelievably large number and it’s out of whack with most of the other assessments that have been made.” -John HoWARd

HoWARd ran the same line in relation to the first study, when the figures were 100,000 in October 2004.

It seems that our PM and US President Bush are comfortable with 50,000 Iraqi deaths number. That figure, if correct still takes some explaining. We as Australians are so meek as to let HoWARd slip out of the spotlight of responsibility as he disputes the Iraqi-death figures. What if we ask him to justify the number he is comfortable with. I wonder what that number would be.

For all the commentators that think an exit strategy would be ‘cutting and running’ I would like to say ‘when in a hole stop digging.’

The data, anecdotes and commentary from the Lancet report are horrific enough, but the part that really left me beyond emotion was this statement:

“Entire households could have been killed, leading to survivor bias.”

Richard Horton the editor of the Lancet sums up all that can be salvaged from HoWARd the stupid, and his bellicose allies as they stay until the job is done.

“Health is now the most important foreign policy issue of our time. Health and wellbeing – their underpinning values, their diverse array of interventions and their goals of healing – offer several original dimensions for a renewed foreign policy that might at least be one positive legacy of our misadventure in Iraq.”

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It was 1984 when my mother excitedly announced to her young, naive daughter that she no longer has to tolerate her boss hovering way too close behind her at the filing cabinet, in the lift or at her desk. It seemed my mother and many women like her were very pleased that legislation was finally in place that protected her from unwanted sexual attention.

That decision created a major shift in the way in which women in particular, have been protected from sexual harassment in the workplace. The legislation also provided for Ms Pam O’Neill to be appointed the first Federal Sex Discrimination Commissioner (FSDC). The FDSC utilises the The Sex Discrimination Act 1984 which gives effect to Australia’s obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and certain aspects of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 156.

“Its [the FSDC] major objectives are to promote equality between men and women, eliminate discrimination on the basis of sex, marital status or pregnancy and, with respect to dismissals, family responsibilities, and eliminate sexual harassment at work, in educational institutions, in the provision of goods and services, in the provision of accommodation and the delivery of Commonwealth programs.” HREOC

Pru Goward is the sixth FSDC. She has a secondary role of Commissioner Responsible for Age Discrimination (CRAD) following the introduction of the Age Discrimination Act in 2004. In this role Pru undertakes educational activities to promote the law which aims to reduce barriers faced by younger and mature age people in public areas of life including employment.

Our current FSDC/CRAD is now the Liberal candidate for Goulburn, NSW. Since that time her previous statements that showed her to be critical of WorkChoices legislation for the group of people she used to represent have been toned down to be significantly less critical and I can’t believe that we put up with this. How do we tolerate this when women of all ages (who represent a large proportion of casual and part-time workers) and the younger and older workers are the most vulnerable and disadvantaged under the WorkChoices legislation.

Pru’s position has moved from this–

“the spread of AWAs will inevitably mean that the present system of employer funded paid maternity leave will disappear. This is because employer provided paid maternity leave, in the absence of a national government funded scheme, has been provided by Australian employers as part of negotiated enterprise agreements or, less often, as part of awards. This will not be possible where there are not collective agreements, which explains why so few AWAs have paid maternity leave. Either the government will need to replace employer funded paid leave with a national government funded scheme or we will be back in the nightmare of low fertility and or of women dropping out of the work force at a time when the country needs them most. HREOC’s chief concerns about the [WorkChoices] bill relate to its impact on the protection of workers with family responsibilities, on pay equity between men and women and on the protection of employees in vulnerable and lower skilled positions in the Australian labour market.”

to this–

“My concerns had not been supported by any evidence. I did have concerns, but I also have always argued that greater flexibility in working arrangements is what has enabled more women to work. The big take-off in female participation rates in Australia was the early 1990s, when part-time work became widely available. In other words, workplace flexibilities are good for job creation and women particularly have taken advantage of them.”

Pru has offered to quit her role as FSDC/CRAD, however it seems that she is not required to. I disagree. I don’t believe she can rebuild her credibility to any point of relevance after what can only be seen as a shameless, unprincipled, mercenary bid for the advancement of her own political career.

P-Go…Principles Gone!

Dear Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration Andrew Robb,

I am proud to live in a country that values equality amoungst the sexes and a quintessential opportunity to be permitted and encouraged to try, enshrined in the notion of a ‘fair go.’

I am however confused by the limits to equality that I know are government sanctioned. The ADF is a good example of this. The Australian military cannot recruit women into certain roles.

“To be eligible for service in this position you must be male. Government policy currently precludes women from being employed in certain ADF positions.”

I am wondering how you could insist that a new Australian can sign up to our values of equality between the sexes and a fair go when neither of these statements are strictly true. Australia discriminates against women in joining aspects of the ADF thereby denying them a fair go.

Please, if you go ahead with this Australian values sign up, exclude the Canadians from this exercise and save yourself considerable embarrassment as they laugh uproarously at your record of equality and a fair go in the military.

Or you could add an asterisk to denote that these Australian values have exceptions.

Or you could scrap these pathetic motherhood statements, admit your hypocrisy, and embrace diversity.

Suki Lombard
Sydney, NSW.

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Why does one abortion doctor face charges and five do not? Because these stories are about the professional behaviour of six doctors and not about abortion.

Dr Leslie Cannold says the criminal law isn’t the best way of dealing with rogue medical practitioners like Dr Sood.

“[…] she clearly was not a good practitioner and something needed to be done to stop her from hurting patients. But on the other hand, the case really seems to point out that the procedures that are available, like the Medical Board, which has been aware of her activities and aware of the problems with her for over a decade, as I’ve understood it, is really not properly empowered to do something about it. So on the one hand you think, well at least something’s been done, but yet on the other hand, this was such a problematic way to do it. With any other procedure of course you wouldn’t have been able to use the criminal law to try and stop a rogue practitioner, and in this instance what’s happened is, we’ve had a confirmation of a very antiquated law which essentially states that abortion is a crime, and it only can be lawfully provided if the doctor agrees that the woman has basically good reasons that satisfy the criteria and the law. And that’s very unfortunate in this day and age, when all other medical procedures are legitimate and lawful, if the patient gives informed consent.”

“It’s reinforcing what is a very unfortunate law around abortion in New South Wales, there’s a similar law in Queensland, and a similar law in Victoria, our most popular states. So most of the women in this country are governed by law, and many of them are unaware of it, that still say abortion is a crime, the criminal is the doctor, the criminal is the woman, and the only way in which you can escape criminal prosecution is if the doctor forms a reasonable belief that the abortion was necessary for the physical and mental health of the woman. And again, I just think in this day and age, that’s just a really inappropriate way to be monitoring any health practice, including abortion. Whereas if it was taken out of the Crimes Act, it could be regulated by the Health Act.” -Leslie Cannold

The confirmation of a foetus having dwarfism, the news of which lead to the woman becoming acutely suicidal, needed to be medically managed by five specialists. The woman with support from her specialist team chose to abort the foetus. This story became public because of Senator Julian McGauran’s desire to shock the public into a pro-life stance.

These disparate stories are about assessing a Doctor’s professionalism. They are not about abortion. It was Julian McGauran who made it about abortion. He did this because his belief system transcends his reach and this was the only way that he could get his agenda noticed. Well, we’ve noticed and we still say it’s a woman’s right to chose. Moreover, we are incensed that a woman’s privacy and her right to reproductive choice was not respected. That right includes the best possible care if the choice is to terminate a pregnancy.
Dr. Sood was charged with unprofessional conduct. Five doctors were not. They were found to have exhibited professional conduct. Some pro-life politicians will do anything to progress their agenda, and that includes attacking a psychologically vulnerable woman.

These antiquated laws need to come off the books and politicians need to stop looking to the prosecutors to rescue them by simply not prosecuting, but rather to say,

“We no longer think in 2006, abortion, those who provide it and those who obtain it, are criminals, and that’s why we no longer have abortion in the Crimes Act.” – Leslie Cannold.

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