“When we get in, we’ll change everything” #4
Andrew Bolt – Wednesday, December 05, 07 (07:19 am)

Before the election, [I]The Australian [/I]finds Chairman Rudd cool on a bill of rights:

A bill of rights perhaps? It’s an issue dear to the civil libertarians who chafe under the repressive security laws post 2001. Well, (Rudd says) Labor has a commitment to seek “community consultation” on a bill of rights but ”no commitment” to implement one.

But after the election, Chairman Rudd unleashes his cultural revolution:

At some point in the next three years, the incoming attorney-general, Robert McClelland, plans to sign a landmark charter enshrining the rights and responsibilities of the nation’s legislators.

For the first time, Parliament will be required to respect rights, such as freedom of the press, and responsibilities, such as protection of the environment or the need to respect minorities, rural Australians and the disabled.

The environment now has rights?

But the real problem is that here is Labor nibbling at the power of voters and adding to the power of judges. It’s the New Left project, and betrays the Left’s usual suspicion of the masses.

Former NSW Labor Premier Bob Carr was rightly critical of such nonsense: The Rights Trap: How a Bill of Rights Could Undermine Freedom, noting (following his headings):

The culture of litigation and the abdication of responsibility that a bill of rights engenders is something that Australia should try and avoid at all costs. …

The transfer of policy decisions from governments and Parliament to the judiciary …

“Freezing” rights: Our view of the importance and priority of rights changes over time. A constitutionally entrenched bill of rights freezes those priorities at a particular point in time. …

Unpredictable interpretation …

The creation of a culture of litigation …

While the Courts are swamped with thousands of Bill of Rights cases, where will the ordinary person go for justice? The Courts will be made even more inaccessible and the cost of running the court system will increase. The main beneficiaries of a bill of rights are the lawyers who profit from the legal fees that it generates and the criminals who manage to escape imprisonment on the grounds of a technicality. The main losers are the taxpayers, and society in general through the reduction of community values to mere courtroom weapons.

Conclusion

Parliaments are elected to make laws. In doing so, they make judgments about how the rights and interests of the public should be balanced. Views will differ in any given case about whether the judgment is correct. However, if the decision is unacceptable, the community can make its views known at regular elections. This is our political tradition.

A bill of rights would pose a fundamental shift in that tradition, with the Parliament abdicating its important policy making functions to the judiciary. I do not accept that we should make such a fundamental change just because other countries have bills of rights. The culture of litigation and the abdication of responsibility that it engenders is something that Australia should try and avoid at all costs. A bill of rights is an admission of the failure of parliaments, governments and the people to behave in a reasonable, responsible and respectful manner. I do not believe that we have failed.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Are you so naive as to believe that everyone who claims to be a Christian really is one? And I didn’t accuse any fellow Christians of being ungodly pagans. What I did was accuse many of my fellow Australians of being ungodly pagans – there is a difference.

You compare me to the “scribes and Pharisees” and imply that I shouldn’t be judging anyone. Did it occur to you that you are judging me? The only biblical prohibition against judging is against judging in hypocrisy. It seems to me that anyone who piously condemns another for the ‘sin’ of judgmentalism whilst doing exactly the same thing themselves is guilty of this.

Re climate-change. You said: “Thank God the rest of the world is actually doing something about the problem.” I ask: What problem? You are simply blindly following all the hype and propaganda. Why don’t you take a closer look at the science behind this issue and start thinking for yourself instead of just believing the sermons of the alarmists? And where did I mention anything about a conspiracy theory?

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

Accusing your fellow Christians of being ungodly pagans is hardly going to impress anybody.

It’s called comparing people’s actions with Christ’s teachings. What do you care what Ewan says about Christians anyway?

No wonder you got so few votes in the election.

In NSW, the CDP was fourth, ahead of the Dems.

The arrogance of your remarks suggests you suffer from the “holier than thou” affliction that Christ condemned in the scribes and Pharisees. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7).

You forgot “go and sin no more”, His followup, as well as an earler command to “judge righteously not according to appearance” (John 7:24). Not to mention what He said about marriage as a man and a woman “from the beginning of creation” (Mark 10:6 ff. citing Gen. 1:27 and 2:24 as real history).

As for global warming, you have no credentials that would provide any authority for your absurd conspiracy theories.

Irony of the year: alGore hasn’t any science qualifications, and a court proved 11 falsehoods in his film. A particularly glaring one was flashing his graph of CO2 increase v temperature change, but rushing through it without letting on that the temperature increase preceded the CO2 increase. So alGore deceitfully reversed cause and effect in something foundational to his case!

But as long as gullible churchians like CH are convinced, he can count on raking in the shekels with his managed fund, paying for his carbon indulgences for jetsetting everywhere and living in an energy-guzzling mansion.

Thank God the rest of the world is actually doing something about the problem.

Oh yeah, by 12,500 flying business class into Bali for a wonderful junket talk-fest. Never mind that the CO2 emissions from all these jets would requite the planting of 2 million trees! So it seems that CH is being rather hypocritical herself in her selective accusations of hypocrisy!

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

It is also silly to whinge about negative gearing, that has bipartisan support. Rents skyrocketed the last time the government abolished negative gearing. In any case, negative gearing is only worthwhile because of the very high tax rates in the top brackets. They would be less worthwhile if tax rates were flatter and lower, and I would be happy to trade in the negative gearing deduction in return. But when the government confiscates almost half a person’s earnings, then there should be some compensation for expenses accrued to make these earnings possible.

Meanwhile, the State Governments need to do their bit by abolishing stamp duty and increasing supply of land for housing. It’s ironic that those who squeal loudest about “affordable housing” are often those whose policies caused the problem. Cf. Affordable housing and [a href==”http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=3359″>Government Created Scarcity: California’s “Affordable” Housing Problem by Thomas Sowell (December 4, 2003).

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. Unfortunately many young people trying to buy their first home have been hurt by financial irresponsibility of their elders living beyond their means and driving house prices skyward.

Meanwhile, under Labor, we can expect to see the end of the baby bonus. It’s most likely because it preserves the family as an autonomous decision-making entity, who might not follow the preferred path of the Anointed. The Anointed would rather have day-care subsidized, because they believe that the State knows best about taking care of children, cf. “It takes a village to raise a child”—Heilary Klinton. But this means that one-income poorer families subsidize the child care of two-income richer families. A childcare voucher would allow the parents to make the choice, whether to supplement the income of a stay-at-home parent, pay something towards Gran’s cost of looking after the kids, or pay a childcare centre. But the Anointed want the tax system to herd people into their way of doing things.

A similar principle applies to education. The Anointed don’t want school vouchers, because it would give the parents the choice to send their kids to the schools the parents think are performing. Rather, the Anointed want kids to be thrown into the mass-education system to be educated their way, and damn parental wishes. With Comrade Gillardova now in charge of education, you can guarantee more PC black armband rubbish.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

Accusing your fellow Christians of being ungodly pagans is hardly going to impress anybody. No wonder you got so few votes in the election.

The arrogance of your remarks suggests you suffer from the “holier than thou” affliction that Christ condemned in the scribes and Pharisees. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone” (John 8:7).

As for global warming, you have no credentials that would provide any authority for your absurd conspiracy theories. Thank God the rest of the world is actually doing something about the problem.

Christine Henderson, Sydney

Being a CDP candidate might mean I am biased toward the CDP but that doesn’t mean I am incapable of holding an objective opinion. Your assertion is absurd. Your comments demonstrate that you are biased yourself toward the Left/liberal end of the political/theological spectrum.

You seem to think that truth is determined by a majority vote. I believe that truth should be determined by facts which is why I and many other thinking conservatives remain skeptical of all the alarmist bulldust that we hear on a daily basis in the MSM about the new pagan religion of man-made-global-warming.

Nobody really believes that 65% of Australians are genuine Christians. If such a large number really are Christian then why is the nation so ungodly? It’s not that the CDP is “out of step with Christian thinking”, rather it is that so many professing Christians like yourself are out of step with the Bible. The church in the West is in serious decline as indicated by the decline in numbers regularly attending church and the fact that the culture is becoming less Christian and more ungodly on a daily basis. In general terms the typical Christian of the West today is biblically illiterate, theologically superficial/liberal, has a worldview that owes more to secular humanism than biblical Christianity, cares more about this life and materialism than eternity and salvation, etc.

Ewan McDonald, Victoria.

Why is not possible to criticise the failings of the outgoing government without being accused of being a “speech writer for Kevin Rudd”? For the record I have no association whatsoever with the ALP, or any other party. But I understand you were a Senate candidate for the CDP, so you can hardly claim to have an objective opinion.

You accuse Australian families of being “mostly pagan”? According to the last census, 65% of Australians claim to be Christian, yet the CDP was able to attract only 0.2% of the vote in Victoria. That indicates that the CDP’s notion of “Christian values” is a long way removed from that of the typical Australian family, so perhaps it is you that is out of step with Christian thinking rather than the other way around. You are also part of a very small minority still in denial about climate change.

And while I don’t support religious vilification laws, might I say that if believers of all persuasions exercised love of neighbour and stopped preaching hate towards other creeds, they might get better respect of the rest of the community.

As for homosexual rights, why should committed same-sex couples not have legal rights regarding inheritance, property etc? The lack of compassion and acceptance of people who are different is yet another reason why many people (both believers and non-believers) consider some Christians to be hypocrites.

Christine Henderson, Sydney