News Story on www.spectator.co.

uk on Friday 20 August 2010

Original News Story By Shelly Gare reproduced below :D Comments First. Article Second :D

These Comments by www.twitter.com/JamesJohnsonCHR

Ten years ago, a federal parliamentary committee held an inquiry into the education of boys. One of the
people making a submission was Babette Francis, a pro-life, pro-family lobbyist who, with Alan Barron,
spoke about the higher numbers of boys needing remedial education, the lower life expectancy of men
and the higher incidence of male suicide. Child Support Agency figures, reluctantly published, reveal that
more than 12,000 non-custodial parents (say, 11,400 beat dead dads, 600 distressed mums) have died since the
Rudd-Gillard Government was elected in 2007. And the FamCrt CSA death toll for the last 3 weeks of the 2010
August election were 90, 188 and 120, respectively: http://dadsontheair.squarespace.com/csa/ and
www.scribd.com/doc/35445947 For 6 million families to be 'done over' out of a population of 22 million, and
extrapolating these death rates out for 35 years back to 1975, the Australian Government's funded and
sponsored mis-treatment of families (it is a $55Bn per annum industry for 30,000 lawyers and other hangers on)
comes close to international human rights laws concepts of mass crimes against humanity and genocide:
www.scribd.com/doc/35990960 . So far as I am aware, only one brave politician in 15 years has had the
humanity, dignity and proper sense of public duty to express outrage over Australia's dirty big secret: Deputy
Speaker Rocher of the House of Representatives described on the floor of the House on 17 June 1997:
www.scribd.com/doc/35318445 .
The Australian Government's mistreatment of transported poor UK and Irish political prisoners during the dark
birth days of the nation via the British 'Convict Transportation System', the Australian Government's mistreatment
of 50,000 indigenous 'stolen generations' of families, and the Australian Government's mistreatment of 40,000
World War II orphans transported to these 'fatal shores' all pale by comparison to the inhumanity, degradation
and exploitation of 100,000 more Australian families every year for 35 years.
Small wonder that the next Australian Government faces >$1Tr in CSA/FamCrt Compensation Class
Actions. I know this as a fact, because I have already drawn up the legal papers. And some of the preliminary
legal actions have already commenced.
Small wonder that Ms Julia Gillard and others face legal investigation and Court proceedings over the
“unfair” dismissal of one Kevin Rudd. I know, because mine are the hands that drew up the papers:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/36492682/Media-Release-20100827-Solicitor-General-Gives-Governor-General-
Right-Advice-But-Dangerously-For-Wrong-Reasons and http://www.scribd.com/doc/36570925/How-Some-
Manipulators-Have-Hijacked-GG-s-Moves
Ten years ago, during the whole of her tenures in Government as a Parliamentarian and as a Minister (up
to and including the wrongful Gillard Surpemecy following on from the wrongful dismissal of one Kevin
Rudd), none of this was apparently of interest to one Ms Julia Gillard, the Member for
Lalor...................................cont in the link below

E: james@jamesjohnson2020.com T: www.twitter.com/JamesJohnsonCHR
W: www.jamesjohnson2020.com SMS: 0401865914

http://www.spectator.co.uk/australia/6215918/in-praise-of-miranda-devine-
Original Link:
and-company.thtml

In praise of Miranda Devine and company

Shelley Gare
Friday, 20th August 2010
Shelley Gare on the dangers of silencing or treating with contempt an ideological
opponent’s views

Ten years ago, a federal parliamentary committee held an inquiry into the education of boys. One of the
people making a submission was Babette Francis, a pro-life, pro-family lobbyist who, with Alan Barron,
spoke about the higher numbers of boys needing remedial education, the lower life expectancy of men and
the higher incidence of male suicide.
None of this was apparently of interest to the Member for Lalor.
‘She launched into a tirade,’ remembers Francis, of the woman who became Prime Minister. ‘She treated us
as if we were criminals in the dock. We were projecting statistics onto a white wall and she started talking
about there not being enough women in parliament. It was true but that should have been the subject of
another inquiry.’
Francis discovered later, from reading Hansard, that Julia Gillard went on to mock her submission,
apologising to a later witness, a female academic in gender research: ‘Sorry about our banter. It started this
morning when we had Babette Francis here, and our behaviour has gone downhill ever since! The quality of
submissions has certainly gone up, our behaviour has gone downhill …’
Not a pretty moment.
What I got from reading Hansard – apart from the fact that, in their concern for boys and men falling off the
edge Francis and Barron were prescient – was that Gillard was badgering the duo and enjoying herself.
‘Name a female head of a Commonwealth department. Name one,’ she demands at one stage. (What this has
to do with educating boys is anyone’s guess.)
Gillard was using classic tactics. Attack people for their opinions, unreasonably and unexpectedly, then laugh
at them behind their backs. American writer David Denby refers to it as the growth of snark.

When Daily Telegraph editor Garry Linnell announced that columnist Miranda Devine was returning to the
Telegraph from The Sydney Morning Herald after nine years, it was almost possible to smell the fatted
calves being roasted. ‘YYYAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYY’ was one of the repeatable comments on Mumbrella.
The constant attacks on such vigorous writers as Andrew Bolt, Gerard Henderson, Janet Albrechtsen, Keith
Windschuttle and Devine intrigue me. These are people who stick their necks out, forcing us to think and
question.
If I raise Devine’s name to left-leaning friends or acquaintances, though, they pooh-pooh, bragging, ‘I don’t
read her’.
Why not? Devine is a professional, hard-working columnist who is readable, original, and challenging. I’m
never aware of racism or sexism sneaking in, wearing a different coat.
If she comes to different conclusions from me, it’s because – guess what? – we don’t share a brain.
Meanwhile the same people who won’t read Devine (or Bolt or the others) will happily attend the so-called
Festival of Dangerous Ideas. I had forgotten the smug nonsense of the title until I saw a report about this
year’s festival, the second. One speaker will be journalist Paul McGeough whose ‘dangerous idea’ will be to
talk more about his experience on the flotilla that tried to break the Gaza Strip blockade in May. Given that
his saga has already occupied columns of newsprint, it’s hard to work out where the danger lies.
(Maybe if human rights activist Jeremy Jones, from the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, fronts up
to ask why a supposedly unbiased reporter would refer to Israeli boats as ‘hyenas’, it could get stirring.)

In April, The Sydney Morning Herald’s Phillip Coorey wrote a surprising piece about a new programme
launched by the think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs, in Melbourne. Surprising, because 80 prominent
Australians, including Dame Elisabeth Murdoch and Cardinal George Pell had attended the launch almost
three weeks earlier but I hadn’t seen a mention anywhere-else in the newspapers or on the ABC. (The
Spectator ran Pell’s opening address.)
More than 50 people were turned away and that was at $2,000 a seat.
The new programme is called The Foundations of Western Civilisation, and its aim is to protect and treasure
western civilisation’s legacy, its pluralism, diversity of thought and its Judeo-Christian underpinnings in the
face of growing secularism and scepticism. And attacks.
Ironically, it aims for ‘recognition of the legitimacy of a variety of viewpoints in public debate (including
religious viewpoints)’. Ironic, because the IPA – like western civilization – is regularly accused of being
intolerant of other views.
The intolerance lies elsewhere, and what we are permitted to talk, write and read about is becoming narrower
by the year.
When Ben Naparstek was made editor of the leftish journal, The Monthly, I was impressed by his feature-
writing background. His stories were wide-ranging, the writing fluent and imaginative. After some friendly
e-mail exchanges, I suggested a story idea, not for me but for another Australian writer in Manhattan. The
subject was American.
Naparstek wrote back promptly to say that at The Monthly, they tried to maintain an Australian focus. Um…
why? Because the rest of the world isn’t relevant to us? Because Australia is so stunningly interesting and
everywhere else is boring?

The editorial decree would be like Louis XV deciding that, with Bach, Scarlatti and Handel composing away
furiously, the French could only hear French music.
Coorey’s IPA article attracted 163 comments on the Herald’s website. A first post from Leah objects,
presumptuously, to his even-handed approach: ‘Phillip Coorey, you’re not even heard in this piece.’ (She
wanted what – comforting bias?) Leah also remarked, ‘Was quite interested to read this article … then it
basically turns out to be about religion.’
It wasn’t – and you get the drift. Most of the comments fell into Leah’s camp.
The western civilisation programme’s website is lush with reproductions of paintings from the past,
depicting historical events. Their richness, vitality and beauty reminded me that studying our civilisation
always meant – during my education – studying other civilisations. As a child, I learned to see myself as a
speck on the edge of a thrilling universe begging to be explored.
Now, because of the insistence that everything must be relevant to us, the view is different. We are the
universe; it must revolve around us. The universe has shrunk; we are huge. Only tell us what we already hold
true.
That’s the most dangerous idea of all.
Shelley Gare is author, most recently, of The Triumph of the Airheads and the Retreat from Commonsense.