"A court has heard the father of Labor MP Chloe Fox is accused of sexually abusing a teenage boy at a school office and at home in the 1980s."
"Notorious paedophile Laurie O'Shea has been confronted by his victims at court after pleading guilty to more child sex charges."
"A Brisbane woman who was jailed in Dubai for adultery after she was allegedly drugged and raped plans to sue the Australian Government."
Strauss-Kahn pleads not guilty to sex crimes
"Fallen IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has launched what promises to be a long campaign to clear his name, pleading not guilty to charges he tried to rape a hotel room attendant."
Strauss-Kahn pleads not guilty to sex crimes
"Fallen IMF chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn has launched what promises to be a long campaign to clear his name, pleading not guilty to charges he tried to rape a hotel room attendant."
It's been a rapey kind of day it seems.
Wanna hear a good joke?
"Federal MP Bob Katter has launched his new political party aimed at taking on issues affecting rural Australia."
"Political analyst Paul Williams says federal independent MP Bob Katter's new Australian Party is unlikely to have much impact on Queensland politics."
I'll resist the temptation to make any 'Mad Katter' jokes (which are funny because his hat is absurd). Other than that, his policy is batshit insane. His party will serve as an outlet for the batshit insane Queenslanders out there (and we know they are out there - One Nation had to get its voters from somewhere!), giving them a party to believe in. And good on them! Hick rednecks need someone to vote for, may as well be Katter's Australian Party.
"The Federal Government has rejected calls by the United Nations to remove children from mandatory detention, saying Australia plans to continue to hold some in minimum security centres."
This is one of those areas of Australian politics where the two major parties fail to distinguish themselves. The Labor parties immigration policy is, at worst, as bad as the Coalitions. The Coalitions immigration policy is always as bad as, or worse than Labor's. All that said, it really was Howard who bungled up immigration in the first place. This is one of those issues where no matter how bad Labor get, they're still better than the Libs, so in a two party system, you're kinda stuck siding with Labor even though you do genuinely dislike their policy. Here's hoping the Greens have an influence on it over the next few years. But their policy isn't workable either.
Labor, the Greens, and the Coalition all have pretty bad immigration policy, but I'm not really sure what a workable solution is. We can't let them all in, because they might not be legitimate refugees and it would encourage more of them to come (the problem with this being that those who come are even less likely to be legitimate refugees, and more likely to be people looking for an easy way in to Australia). But mandatory detention isn't the most humane thing to do. But we need to put them somewhere while we validate their refugee status!
Labor, the Greens, and the Coalition all have pretty bad immigration policy, but I'm not really sure what a workable solution is. We can't let them all in, because they might not be legitimate refugees and it would encourage more of them to come (the problem with this being that those who come are even less likely to be legitimate refugees, and more likely to be people looking for an easy way in to Australia). But mandatory detention isn't the most humane thing to do. But we need to put them somewhere while we validate their refugee status!
It's a no-win situation really.
My only opinion on it is that we should have onshore processing. Processing them on Australian soil forces us to obey UN conventions of human rights, and forces us to at least treat them okay. If we can just ship them somewhere else to process, there aren't as many human rights safeguards in place.
The other opinion I have is that I don't think immigration is a bad thing. I'd welcome boat people by the boatload if it meant we could deport all the drunk drivers.
All that said, I think there need to be higher standards for English competency than there currently are. I know my ability to speak English isn't fantastic, and I was born in this country. But dammit! There are so many Asians out there who can barely understand a word of English, who can barely speak the language, who somehow passed the English competency exam to get into university. There was that whole thing a while ago about immigrants and international students cheating in English exams to get into this country.
Seriously, if you can't even speak English, how the hell do you think you're going to get a degree from an entirely English speaking university, where all assessment and lectures are given in English, and all staff are expected to know English and nothing more (except teachers of foreign languages, but fuck those guys)? I swear I know some students who cheated to get in to the university I go to. There's no way they could pass an English competency exam. Not a chance.
Moving on...
"The Coalition's argument that a carbon tax would lay waste to Australian jobs may be in tatters after an Australia Institute report found the losses would be "so trivial as to be invisible"."
Pretty big news. Gives the government extra strength in defending their climate change policy. And it's fairly intuitively true. Not only are not many jobs going to be lost, but whole new industries will spring up producing "carbon friendly" (I hate that term, I hate it so much) products.
Moreover, anything to slow down the mining boom is only a good thing for this country. The mining economy is heating up too much while the rest of the Australian economy suffers (hence the term 'two-speed-economy'). Bringing skilled workers out from the mining sector and into other industries will only strengthen Australia's economy.
As I asserted previously, the government will win the climate change/carbon tax debate. This is further evidence of that.
"The Defence Force says Australian soldiers working in Afghanistan have killed a key Taliban leader."
Another one bites the dust. D-d-do-do-do. Another one bites the dust.
I agree in part. The average turn around time in our detention centres is 6 months. For a refugee who's had bombs thrown at them or watched their family get killed I think they'd be patient enough after that to take the 6 months. An illegitimate 'refugee' who didn't get persecuted out of their country and payed a bunch of money to get on a boat however, might get a little more antsy seeing as they'd feel entitled to get the illegal service they paid for.
ReplyDeleteI think we should have an 8 month policy. Where if we can't process your shit in 8 months on shore, or if we reject it once, you're going to Malaysia. Then we specifically give people who are from the countries most well known for producing legitimate refugees priority. As for minors we should treat them just like adults only if they can't be processed in 8 months we don't ship them off shore, but we put them in a labour camp for 2 years until they work their way into being immigrants.
The 8 month thing would encourage people to bring their ID and a credible story. We need to link in better with the UN to verify shit, but the guts of it is above.