Will the Refugees on Nauru be allowed into Australia?

Inside the race for Wentworth

A storm is brewing in Sydney’s fanciest suburbs, where some lifelong Liberal voters have told the ABC they are preparing to break ranks for the first time at the looming Wentworth by-election.

It is a fair bet, and I hope it will, that this blue-ribbon seat will go to the independent Kerryn Phelps. This Liberal seat was last held by our former Prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who was  sacked a few weeks ago by his own party. The present PM, Scott Morrison is a fervent Pentecostal  believer holding anti SSM opinions. He is now fighting to keep a law in place that will allow Government funded private religious schools keep the right to sack gay or LBGTQ teachers. This has caused a furore in Australia whose residents voted overwhelmingly in favour of Same Sex Marriage less than a year ago. The seat of Wentworth has been held by the Liberals since Federation.

This Prime Minister also proudly displays a small trophy on his desk showing a metal coloured boat, backed by a timber board with the lettering, “we stopped the Boats.”Mr Morrison is mightily proud he was so successful in keeping thousands of refugees on several off-shore islands, including the small island nation of Nauru. As you all know, the tragedy of those that have spent years on those islands have been subjected to the worst torture of all, the loss of all hope. Last week the Government of Nauru kicked out the only few remaining people volunteering for Medicine Sans Frontières who helped the refugees with their unimaginable plight of staying alive.

The residents of Wentworth, although traditionally liberal, do hold a much more progressive ideology and were second of having the most votes in favour of SSM. They also do not like the way both the Liberals and the Labor party keep refusing to abide by international law to allow refugees, irrespective of their mode of travel, to be dealt with humanely and on-shore. There is now an increasingly growing disquiet about the plight of refugees held off-shore. It has become a large issue in Wentworth and the rest of Australia. People are concerned about the international consequences of flaunting international law.

Will Australia say ‘I am sorry’ in a few years time? Please read the link below.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/14/kerryn-phelps-urges-wentworth-voters-to-use-byelection-to-protest-inhumane-refugee-policies

How Seniors grapple with complications of Governing.

Almost There

Each evening, and with the demeanour of a black coated undertaker giving a quote for a juicy burial, we get to see our top AEC ( Australian Electioneering Commissioner) scrutineer on the telly, giving us solemnly the latest count on the last Federal Election. This commissioner is without bias and sworn to total independency as far as his political views are concerned. He is neutral. It is why he is very serious in his delivery of the latest numbers. He is so careful and weighs up the words carefully. If he was any more careful he would just cough slightly or wipe his chin adroitly. He looks as if he practised his art in front of his wife, or, in the case of no wife, in front of the mirror.

Now, faced with a battery of cameras he is without doubt having his moment of fame. Not, that he shows any enjoyment. Remember, joy could easily be seen as being biased. It would be surprising if he did not hold a political view. I would bet he is a conservative. How could anyone not become a scrutineer without also devoid of a free spirit? As our chief scrutineer intones the latest figures, the camera takes us to the room where a whole army of scrutineers are counting the voting papers. Row after row of tables covered with both green coloured and white sheets of papers. It is a very complicated affair, and for those not British born, too esoteric too even come close to comprehending. A bit like cricket really. Far too many numbers and variables.

The vote, and that includes all votes apparently, can go elsewhere in a process called ‘giving preferences.’ In a two horse race, ( I just learned this phrase recently) any vote to another party ends up mainly with either the Conservatives (Liberal National Party) or Labor. Labor without the ‘u’ in it! Another mystery. Yet, I remember many years ago back around 1977 or so, when I became an Australian national citizen, things appeared fairly simple. The ceremony for Nationalisation was held at the Sydney Town-Hall. We were given the choice to swear by oath our allegiance to Australia either on the bible or alternatively to the English Queen. I hope I have this right. I remember that it was a difficult choice, as I believe in neither.

Even so, it was a mass ceremony with hundreds of European migrants. No good being surly, and in any case, a cup-o-tea with Arnett’s biscuits, compliments of the salvos followed. I duly went on the stage and was giving a certificate of Australian Nationality. This certificate is in a box somewhere together with my high school diplomas, birth/marriage certificates and other washed up flotsam of time gone by. It is funny, that till this day I am still reluctant to accept so much that seems incomprehensible. This finding of so much that remains incomprehensible is an attitude of the curmudgeon. An obsession with the finicky. Just because I became Australian doesn’t seem to include me in the welcoming psyche of just acceptance on how things can be different in different cultures.

Going back to the voting. I read up about the Westminster system and the Adversarial part of it. I will make greater effort in understanding that the senate voting does not coincide with voting for the lower house except with a double dissolution of both houses. I will try and understand that some senators run for a six year period but others just three years. Further more, I will desist trying to come to grips with the preferential system of voting. I will desists asking; but why? I will resist, writing letters to the ABC, on why I think a multi party system would avoid all those preferential votes going anywhere accept there where the voter voted for.

I want to be a true believer, an Australian.

The Rage of a Man

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Now that millions have watched the video clip of ex Prime Minister K. Rudd exploding in not finding the right words to translate something in Chinese, we might try attempt understand why men seem to lose the plot so much more than women. I am talking about this uncontrolled Nikita Khrushchev-like blind desk thumping rage, not the kind of nagging anger that perhaps some women are better skilled at.

Is it all due to sex and hormones?

No-one expected him to be perfect at his job, but that so ‘losing it’ over such a seemingly trivial matter is not all that uncommon by men. The travel by men away from wife can’t be easy on the marital conjugals, can it? Can we still not remember Fraser and his early morning wandering around the American Hotel lobby sans pants some years ago? What a plight he found himself in! What a sweet story that was. Still, he never was caught having a blind rage. He made amends ever since, not least by having resigned his Liberal Party membership. Which ex Australian PM can boast that achievement?

This blind rage is why, they, us men, wage war. War is nothing much more than massive lemming-like collective going totally over the board raving nuts by fruitcake men. How can killing make life better?

Now, women generally don’t make war and rarely suffer from blind desk-thumping rage. However, it is not uncommon that just prior to their monthly hormone changes they can get quite stroppy and are known to even have committed murder. Indeed, a defense on those hormonal grounds is sometimes still taken in consideration. There have been cases where PMS has proven to have turned women in behaving like raving mad animals. Part of the acquittal of a woman of a serious crime was that she had to undertake a strict regime of Court ordered progesterone treatment. http://www.aic.gov.au/publications/previous%20series/proceedings/1-27/~/media/publications/proceedings/16/easteal2.pdf

One woman had stopped taking the Court ordered hormonal medication and within days hurled a brick through a window. She again used her hormonal imbalance successfully to be acquitted once again.

While men are at the mercy of producing millions of restless and angry sperms every second 24/7, (year in and year out), all of those millions of aggressive squirming desperate sperms are meant to get ejected outside or inside somewhere, let’s not forget women are just as subject to their physical and hormonal proclivities as well. Are they also not held at ransom by their, just as volatile, ovaries?  However, the business of ovaries is only monthly and during pregnancy even gets a bit of a well earned holiday. While with men it is often vented through blind raging Victa-lawnmower pull starting fury and hopelessly losing the plot.

We men can’t just make wars or stand above the hand-basin wanking day and night, can we?