Yes there is a place for writing up the minor parties. And if I do so in the future, describing pro-faith and pro-family parties, I will of course feature the CDP and FF as well as the DLP.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

The DLP is running candidates for the Senate, e.g. in Victoria, John Madigan is their lead candidate. The DLP has a real chance of getting a Senate seat if people, like your followers, get behind him and vote 1 DLP. Anyone who votes DLP can be sure that the candidates will support Christian values.

Catherine Joseph

He also opposed a republic with a popularly elected president, and an anti-vilification bill on the line of Victoria’s fascist Bill — which Chairman Rudd refused to rule out.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

This Labor-voting crowd, well represented among lawyers, judges, teachers and academics, wants power taken away from elected MPs and given to unelected judges. They badly want a bill of rights.

They know perfectly well that all bills of rights – be they British-style statutory ones or Canadian-style entrenched models – have precisely this increase-the-power-of-judges effect. Indeed, if they had no effect at all on the power balance, why would anyone push so hard to have one?

This crowd also knows that if voters are asked in any sort of referendum they will always be sensible enough to vote down a bill of rights or some disguised version of one. So these people set up elaborate consultation processes that attempt to give the illusion that a bill of rights is wanted. This is precisely what the state of Victoria did before enacting its statutory bill of rights only last year. Knowing that they could not win a referendum there (or anywhere) a “consultation process” was put in place chaired by a longstanding proponent of bills of rights and lacking even a single opponent of these instruments.

Yet this consultation sham of “like-minded activists talking to like-minded activists” served a useful function for the legal revolutionaries. It helped reinforce the basic selling line that’s used.

The trick is to just keep repeating the mantra: “We need to protect and uphold fundamental human rights.” Never, ever acknowledge that people in Australia simply disagree about what exactly is required to protect and uphold these indeterminately phrased, vague moral guarantees.

So proponents gloss over the patently true fact that smart, reasonable, even nice people simply have different opinions about gay marriage, abortion, how to treat refugee claimants, how to balance security concerns about terrorism against individual liberties and so much more. Those are the sort of things a bill of rights takes away from parliament and puts into the province of the judges.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Here is Rudd on Lateline 24 August 2002 Saddam’s WMD:

“There is no debate or dispute as to whether Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction,” Rudd said on his return from a trip to the UK.

“He does.

“There’s no dispute as whether he’s in violation of UN Security Council resolutions.

“He is.”

Furthermore, “A leaked letter from Kevin Rudd to Prime Minister John Howard shows the Opposition Leader backed Australia’s involvement in Iraq in the aftermath of the invasion.”

About interest

About the paranoia with negative gearing, Labor tried to drop it, and had to reintate it when rents soared into the ionosphere. There are much better solutions: abolish housing ban open space laws and state stamp duties, and introduce a low flat tax in return for abolishing negative gearing, since that is only worthwhile because the highest marginal tax rates are so punitive.

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, net household wealth has increased by 14 per cent from 2003-04, from $494,346 to $562,854. So Howard is right that, on average, Australian working families have never been better off.

And the problems with allegedly unaffordable housing are often due to many people with expectations too high, wanting a first home much bigger than the first home their parents or grandparents owned. So they abandoned financial responsibility, e.g. making sure they could afford the repayments if the rates were increased by 2% (more than the total of the interest rate rises under Howard). So they put themselves into debt to buy bigger homes than they can afford—and THIS is a major factor in driving up house prices because of all this extra money pouring into the housing market.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Many seem more than willing to pass judgment on the war in Iraq, and rightly so. War is not and should not be desirable. But there are a few things that need to be considered before we condemn the Howard government for it’s participation.

Firstly, we are not part of the governments involved, so we do not have access to the information they had when they entered the war. As others have pointed out, we do not know the full extent of Saddam’s activities. But we do know that he saw nothing wrong with mass murder as a means to an end. WWII could have been averted, or at least greatly shortened, if action had been taken against Hitler. Yes, I’m aware that a great number of people have been killed by USA and Co in Iraq. In the same way, there would have been much death and destruction if preemptive action had been taken against Nazi Germany. We can say, “Oh look, they didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction.” But if I were Saddam, I would get rid of them before the US came in. (Please excuse me if I’m incorrect here, I am hardly an expert.)

Secondly, consider Howard’s choices in the matter. I am probably wrong, but I doubt he could have stopped the US from going ahead with the war. So he could either stay out, or pitch in. Which is the better option? Stay out, lose standing with the US, and refuse to make a positive contribution? Or he could commit troops, in the hope that he makes a positive contribution to a inevitable situation. I think we can all agree that Iraq is safer because of Australia’s contribution. So which is the greater evil, sending troops to the war, or not sending them?

Thirdly, many who pass judgment on the war are left-wing atheists. They quote numbers of deaths and tell us how terrible it is. (I agree, it is tragic.) Next, they tell us that all these people have died just so that the US could control oil. I find it a terrible irony that so many of these same “lefties” tell us that it is OK to abort a child, if it makes things more convenient for the parents.

Once again, please excuse any ignorance on my behalf. I am not an expert in foreign affairs, these are just my thoughts on the matter. Also, I would like to emphasize that I find the death and destruction in Iraq just as disturbing as anyone else. I am simply hesitant to pass judgment on the (Australian) government.

Samuel Sparks, QLD

But what you crudely dismiss as mere fundamentalist hang-ups about sexuality and reproduction are in fact vitally important issues of concern to most people in the world. Family does matter, as does human life, and political parties which see the importance of marriage, family and respect for human life will indeed find many people around the world supporting them.

Your comments perhaps tell us more about you and your particular set of values than it does about the many millions of people who deeply value are care about such crucial issues.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch