I have a number of gay friends and I believe the treatment they recieve from the Howard Government is disgraceful. In support of my friends I am posting the following reasons why Gay Marriage should not be legal (note the sarcasm please)

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Australians always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, liposuction and air conditioning.

2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.

3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.

4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can’t marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.

5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Brittany Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.

6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn’t be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren’t full yet, and the world needs more children.

7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.

Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in Australia

9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.

10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven’t adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans…

repost if you believe in legalizing gay marriage!

Reading about George Bush’s current visit to Australia for APEC ( or OPEC as GWB calls it) reminded me of something I read a few months back.

May 10, 2006
GWB’s Best Moment–In His Own Words
Filed under: Uncategorized, Ethics in Goverment, General Commentary, Energy & Sustainability — Shel @ 6:45 am

It’s not some flaming leftist saying this. George W. Bush himself, according to the Reuters newswire, told a German paper,

“I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound (3.402 kilos) perch in my lake,” he told the newspaper in an interview published on Sunday.

Pretty sad. An administration so disgraceful, so scandal-ridden, such a failure in both policy and operations that even the president can’t think of anything he’s proud of.

Georgie, my boy, let me prod your memory a bit–I can think of at least a few proud moments:

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, you made a conscious and I believe sincere effort to distinguish between the terrorists and ordinary Muslims and Arabs. Of course, that didn’t stop various government agencies from coming down very hard on those communities, imprisoning people on spurious grounds, etc.
In one of your State of the Union addresses, you advocated hydrogen cars–a good thing, if designed in ways that foster sustainability and independence from the big oil companies. I think that was the same year your State of the Union speech honored Rosa Parks, who was in the audience.
And finally, in the very recent past you’ve said we must end our oil addiction. I’d like to think you’re sincere about that, and that you’ll follow up that statement with a significant infusion of R&D money into solar, wind, geothermal, even biodiesel (but not nuclear, for heaven’s sake). In the nearly two years left in your administration, you could go down in history as the president who solarized America–a rather better legacy than catching a fish!
Your real legacy to date, however, is a lot less positive. To bring up just a handful of the many, many low points:

Lying repeatedly to get us into a stupid, stupid war in Iraq
Leaving New Orleans to drown
Doing nothing to prevent 9/11 even though evidence strongly suggests the attack was widely known, in advance
Overseeing an administration dogged by corruption, mismanagement, venality, yes-man-ism, and unwillingness to listen to critical voices
Turning over public resources for private gain
Squandering both the reservoir of international good will following 9/11 and the considerable surplus you inherited
And on and on it goes–this list could continue for pages. We’ve had presidents who were outdoorsmen before, including both Roosevelts and Ronald Reagan, among others. But never a president who felt his best moment in office was catching a fish!

Some University degrees now cost about the same as a average Australian mortgage according to 2008 Good Universities Guide.  As the average Australian mortgage is far more then $100,000 clearly the Prime Minister didn’t mean  there wouldn’t be any higher than $100,000 when he said;

“The Government will not be introducing an American-style higher education system. There will be no $100,000 university fees under this Government.”

.Last year 60 courses cost more than $100,000. Maybe he was practicing for his next big election promise – low interest rates anyone ?

As for Howard’s successor , Costello seems quite happy to compare us to the USA ;

The Treasurer describes the present system as “generous” and has pointed out that in the United States, students forked out more than $100,000 and rely on banks to lend them the money.

The USA education system wasn’t good enough for Howard in 1999, but seems to suit Costello fine in 2007. As the USA features near the bottom of world education affordability and standards rankings personally I don’t think its good enough and doubt other students do either.  If the treasurer and wannabe prime minister insists on comparing Australia to the USA he should  remember that the USA government spends more on education than the Australian government. Though apparently not very efficiently.

The Howard Government has maintained that students only contribute one-quarter of their course costs. However in this proportion the government includes its own funding to universities unpaid HECS debts. Most students will pay this money back to the government making students’ contribution to the cost of their education , on average, 40 per cent. For law students, it’s 84 per cent.

In fact Law students sharing the top HEC’s rates with medicine, dentistry and veterinary science, often pay more than the actual cost of their degree. I doubt many Law students find that possibility very surprising, after all anyone seen the Legal equivalent of high-tech medical equipment in a law school ? Makes me wonder where my yearly $8333 is going.

Labor has promised to phase out domestic full-fee degrees at public Universities commencing 1 January 2009 in order to ensure ” access for all young Australian students based on merit, rather than financial mean” . This raises the question how Labor will compensate financially stricken universities for the lost student revenue.

Labor’s new education spokesman Stephen Smith says only that “HECS relief” would be done in a “financially responsible way”, presumably by taking money from other programs or from a budget surplus.

Hopefully ones of those other program won’t be public health. I doubt even Peter Costello would willingly compare the Australian health system to the USA one.

More information

THE AUSTRALIAN

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

STEPHEN SMITH – MEDIA RELEASE – UNI DEGREE COSTS AN AVERAGE AUSTRALIAN MORTGAGE – 14 AUGUST 2007

On June 25th the Guild held a Media Conference and Forum on the changes by the federal Government to JET. The forum was organised by Womans officer Clare Middlemas and Murdoch student and single parent Peta Miller. JET is a program which provides childcare assistance for single parents that are studying by paying most of the ‘gap fee’ not covered by Child Care Benefit for the hours of care needed to do approved activities. . Childcare is extremely expensive and often unaffordable for single parents who are studying.

Last July the federal government made changes to program, making parents studying courses which exceed 12 months not eligible for any childcare assistance. This change in legislation is very discriminatory. It gives extra support to single parents, that are studying a short course, that will accordingly get them into a menial, low paid job. It traps many single parents and their children in a cycle of poverty.

The Forum was well attended by students, politicians, union bosses and the media, including Rachel Siewart, Greens Senator, Jock Ferguson, Secretary of the AMWU, Louise Pratt, ALP MLA, and Pendo Mwaketele, Chair of Women’s at Curtin.

As a direct result the government announced they would henceforth relax the policy a little and give all single parents, regardless of their entire course duration, 12 months worth of assistance.

However, though this is a great victory, it is far from being sufficient. Under this change single parents will only be covered by JET for a twelve month period, after which they will once again find themselves back in the exact same situation they were in just weeks ago.

The ALP has publicly stated it would look to ensure in its pre-election policies that JET would be sorted to provide appropriate childcare subsidies for single parents to stay in and complete their education. Greens Senator Rachel Siewert has spoken about the issue in parliament .

If you are a single parent or are simply interested in the issue please contact me on basha.stasak@gmail.com and I can put in touch with the relevant people.

Global Terror Levels

As many are aware, the French government recently announced a raise in its terror alert level from “Run” to “Hide”. The normal level is “General Arrogance”, and the only two higher levels in France are “Surrender” and “Collaborate”. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country’s military capability.

It’s not only the French who are on a heightened level of alert: Italy has increased the alert level from “Shout loudly and excitedly” to “Elaborate military posturing”. Two more levels remain, “Ineffective combat operations” and “Change sides”.

The Germans also increased their alert state from “Disdain” to “Dress in uniform and sing marching songs”. They have two higher levels: “Invade a neighbour” and “Lose”.

Seeing this reaction in continental Europe the Americans have gone from “Isolationism” to “Find another oil-rich nation for regime change”. Their remaining higher alert states are “Attack random countries (ideally those without any credible military)” and “Beg the British for help”.

The British are also feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from “Miffed” to “Peeved”. Soon though, security levels may be raised yet again to “Irritated” or even “A Bit Cross”. Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the Blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from “Tiresome” to “Bloody Nuisance”. The last time the British issued a “Bloody Nuisance” warning level was during the Great Fire of 1666.

The Australians thought about doing something but have decided that their security level of “She’ll be right mate” is enough.

Expect for the small % of Australians who decided to play “simon says” with America, unfortunately that small % run the country.

Today I along with a number of guild and university people visited the office of Dr Carmen Lawrence. We did a short photo shoot, with her signing the Close the Gap Petition. Quite a interesting visit even if we didn’t really get a chance to speak to her. It was nice to see Dr Lawrence supporting close the gap, as it is such a worthwhile cause.

Close the Gap is a campaign run by Oxfam to raise funding for indigenous health. Aboriginal people suffer from serious health problems which are not addressed by the Government. Though the Government doesn’t really seem to care about anyone’s health. In the case of Aboriginal people the effects are quite clear with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women only living to on average 65. The situation is even worse for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander men whose life expectancy is only 59.4 years. Thats around 17 years less then the rest of the Australian population.

The Murdoch Guild is supporting Close the Gap by having students sign the petition. Below are some photos of the Kulbardi staff and Guild representatives signing the petition.

We will also have a guild table on Bush Court next week, so please come and sign the petition.

On Wednesday 2nd of May Students all over Australia marched for students rights at work, quality and accessible education and a greener future. These are all important an relevant issues for Australian students.

I have to admit it was my first rally and while it wasn’t hugely successful [only about 100 students from all the Perth campuses] it was a great deal of fun. We marched from the Perth Cultural Centre to the office of Liberal  Chris Ellision in northbridge. The senator, surprise, surprise refused to come meet with us but that’s probably better for the campaign. Shows he has nothing to say in response or that he doesn’t want to talk to his electorate. What is it with politicians not answering people concerns ? We vote them in.

Maybe we weren’t important enough for him….