History will judge the Prime Minister
Piers Akerman – Saturday, September 17, 11 (08:09 pm)
BOASTING of being on the right side of history is a big call, but Julia Gillard believes she owns that space on the basis of the carbon tax.
To be on the right side of history Gillard could look at her IR regulations which I pointed to in ‘07. Those regulations are modelled on Della Bosca’s NSW ones, which allowed a neglected school boy, Hamidur Rahman, to die, and to prevent a public servant from giving valid testimony to the coroner’s office. Gillard made a promise on Sunrise prior to the ‘07 election, and they still have her back. To be on the right side of history she could correct that wrong.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (08:27pm)
Sun 18 Sep 11 (02:26pm)
Gillard must think history started when the Labor Party very foolishly made her PM and people do not recognise her unprecedented mess and damage,
I know an Ex-Labor politician who told me when in government he was told exactly what to say and when to say it. They controlled his every word. He was in a sort of brace.
I think he is still trying to come to terms with the whole experience.
Disillusionment would be one word that applies.
JJ.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (08:46pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:22pm)
Aye, JJ. Spot on. I have known several bright, enthusiastic schoolboys with ideals and dreams who turned into contemptible adults after joining the ALP
Sun 18 Sep 11 (12:48am)
That control appeared to be on display in the carbon tax debates last week, John Jay.
Each Labor MP’s speech appeared to be written by someone else, as they read the words as if they were not their own, and in the speeches were all of the usual Labor slogans, charges against Tony Abbott etc---all sounded very flat and programmed to me.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (06:41am)
To DD Ball and Truth -
They control their own .. they want to control us.
Slavery.
JJ.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (06:56am)
Further -
What’s that line in John Lennon’s song “Come Together” ?
“One thing I can tell you is you’ve got to be free!”
Freedom ... precious freedom ....
The Left hate freedom.
By hating freedom they hate us.
Control is their creed.
JJ.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (11:20am)
Yes Iv seen inside the Labor monster, that’s why I hate it, the labor party, what a bunch of freaks!
I cannot see many sensible people, joining Labor now. Up to now many in the media and Labor have been able to hide the very bad side which is most of Labor over the past four years or so. They almost make Labor villians into heros, or else hide them. Because very arrogant Julia Gillard has been such an unprecedented disaster, hard to believe in fact that she could be so bad, I do not think that Labor & Co will be able to do anything but show Gillard as very bad for Australia and being very much on the wrong side of history. Get Up is another of Labor’s disasters. It will take years for Labor to recover from very arrogant Gillard and there being far too many Labor MPs who have been Union hacks and staffers and also the very serious allegations of Union corruption. I note also that Barack Obama has been attacking Fox News, that is another idea Gillard stole when she attacked News Ltd here. She has no worthwhile original proposals, only endless untruths, squandering $billions, disasters, debacles and the unnecessary but very, very serious and frightening damage her Carbon Tax will do into the future as very alarmingly described by Henry Ergas yesterday .
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:02pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:26pm)
Good people have always joined the ALP. Even now. Tragically the machine corrupts them. That is why you see their ministers saying black equals white. They aren’t trying to convince you. They are trying to put down a text for true believers in the future.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:55pm)
They are all guilty of fraudulent Machiavellian conduct while mouthing the same lies Gillard tells.
History will see them slink out of Government with their tails between their legs. A pox on all of them.
Stamped forever as the most dreadful lot of deceitful , inept mugs ever to blacken the name of Australian Government.
That is getting off way easier than they deserve.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (01:50am)
Some good thoughts PeterMax.
It is amazing ... when Left leaders (Gillard, Obama, etc) see all their grand plans crumbling before their eyes ... they turn on the media ... they shoot the messenger.
It never even dawns on them they are incompetent.
It never even dawns on them they were never in reality.
Normal people when they fail at something realize they were not as good as they thought they were. But not this strange species known as the Left ...
It is the world that is wrong, their message isn’t getting through, reality is wrong, the media are wrong, overseas influences caused it, their predecessors caused it, the man in the moon caused it ...
But never, ever, ever, was it them.
To be so, so arrogant that you cannot accept any personal responsibility ...
Such is the Leftist.
They are pathetic human beings.
JJ.
I must be dreaming ...
Did I just read Conroy’s inquiry into the media excludes the ABC?
The ABC that is a huge and influential part of the media?
The ABC that violates it’s own charter daily?
The ABC that wastes huge amounts of our money propping up toxic Leftism?
I must be dreaming ... when I wake up I’ll realize it was only a dream ........
Conroy wouldn’t be so ..... wouldn’t be so blatantly selective .......
JJ.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:07pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:24pm)
Hi John Jay. Conroy is being typically selective and looking out as always for their Labor mates. But has fewer mates by the day.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:28pm)
The ALP are not interested in truth. They wish for propaganda. They want to remove balance.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (05:00pm)
JJ, you’re surprised? We live under the Gillard/Brown Reich. Freedom of speech is always the first casualty in a dictatorship.
SHAME CONROY. SHAME GILLARD. SHAME BROWN.
I was just watching a doco about a well-known totalitarian leader… and for a moment I swear I forgot what country I was living in. Wishful thinking.... for a delicious second I thought maybe the Australian Army would hold a coup and rid us of this repulsive, putrid, rotting ‘government’....
It cannot get any worse. And yet it does. Continually.
This ‘government’ is CRIMINAL.
This ‘government’ is CORRUPT.
This ‘government’ is run by thug UNION SCUM.
This ‘government’ is the first and last word in INCOMPETENCE.
This ‘government’ is systematically DESTROYING my beloved Australia.
I simply cannot believe what I am witnessing. This is like Germany in 1933. Systematic destruction of the economy, freedom of speech being threatened by bully boy ‘generals’, botched immigration policy… wow. I’m in some weird time/place warp.
That dyed-haired commie skank and her filthy Union-owned scum backers need to be jailed for crimes against Australia.
I guess at times and in places in history that’s exactly what would have happened. Oh well, back to my daydream.
To reform the inner workings of Labor?
To reduce union power?
If I were a bookie I would offer 100/1 odds to anyone willing to put a wager on this happening.
Make that 200/1.
JJ.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:14pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:30pm)
Hawke and Keating reviewed things with a rubber stamp ten years ago. Same problems then. Who thought ALP could get elected the way it did circa ‘07?
Sun 18 Sep 11 (10:04am)
John Jay, as Caesar said “He who controls the purse-strings controls the enterprise”. Given that the vast majority of ALP money - for both election funding & in the form of largesse via ALP politicos seats on the boards of Industry Super Funds (A nice little earner for them & perhaps a good future topic for Piers) - comes from the unions, then the unions will always “Own” the ALP.
Interestingly, the majority of funding for GetUp! (I prefer GoAway!) also comes from the unions, naturally. When you a holistic view of the ALP/Unions/GetUp!/ABC set-up, it is more like some form of Socialist Mafia than a bona fide political organization.
There is little doubt that the state of our national governance since 2007 under the ALP with Rudd and Gillard at the helm has been reduced to a sorry state after only 4 years. It is likely to get worse because there appears to be currently nothing on the political landscape which might upset the 4 Independents in their preparedness to continue supporting PM Gillard.
One wonders how can the blindingly obvious be so obscure to them, and what will it take to lift the scales from their eyes?
A famous question comes to mind, ”Where is the enemy?”
It is a question which the Independents, Greens, the mainstream media, and especially the ABC, do not want to answer in their love-is-blind affair with the ALP, let alone dare believe that a such question exists in the first place.
The infection which may open their eyes comes from Queensland and now sits in Canberra. Its revelation is found in the Rofe QC Audit of the Heiner Affair which the Clerk of the Senate looked at in recent weeks.
The Clerk gave her assessment in Advice No 47. It’s now on the public record.
She decided that the Heiner Affair was “ ...very serious.”
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/priv_ctte/clerks_advices/2007-current.htm#advice47
Piers, let’s hope that this nation can sooner, rather than later, also examine this Audit like the Clerk did.
Its cure may be just the thing this nation is desperately searching for to rid itself of an unwanted, dysfunctional Federal Government which deceived its way into office.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:28pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:38pm)
The government could still topple in September 2011. It is that stable. All it takes is one ALP who cares for the party’s future.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (12:51am)
To Natural Justice Medicene -
The Heiner Affair is very serious?
It is more than very serious.
It is Watergate scale, or bigger.
It could be argued that the complete and utter refusal of our media to examine Mr “Fixit” Rudd’s past in 2007 literally changed, and profoundly so, the history of our country.
Rudd’s election was a very, very dark day ... it set in motion a sequence of events that are an ongoing tragedy.
Were the media doing it’s job in 2007, Rudd would have come under enormous pressure and may have even eventually ended up in jail.
There are high level advisers in Federal politics who believe this is what should have happened. I have been told this personally.
Had our pretend media done it’s duty at that time we would not now be billions and billions and billions in debt, many now dead would be alive, Australia would have dignity, the Carbon fraud would be in the national dust bin, Gillard would be droning in opposition, her talons away from all levers of power ...
And much more besides.
The gorilla in the room - Heiner - could have, had we a real media, grabbed Rudd by the throat ... thus sparing us all the mess that now surrounds us.
Heiner is dynamite.
It could still explode.
John Jay.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (01:16am)
Although she said it was serious, she was unfortunately a bit dismissive of Lindeberg’s submission, wasn’t she, natural justice?
Has there been anything more on Nick Xenophon’s attitude on it?
Sun 18 Sep 11 (06:37am)
The puerile Indies are out for revenge and score
settling and are beset by envy and hatred of Tony Abbott ,
the Nationals and coalition...probably excepting
Turnbull...so there will be no change in the
situation as it is at the moment and will remain
so until Labor’s time is up in 2013 and the
election has to be called.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (06:44am)
To Truth -
Funny that ...
Few know as much as Lindeberg.
JJ.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (09:04am)
Truth
Sadly, no one knows what Lindeberg said in his submission, only the Clerk and the members of the Senate Privileges Committee.
I note that she uses the word “problematic” as to whether or not his submission fell within those particular terms of reference. In other words, it could have.
I’d like to make that judgement for myself.
And, therein lies one of the major issues now confronting the Senate. How do we know whether the Clerk’s assessment of Lindeberg’s submission is correct, or, for that matter, whether she was right in declaring the matter “...very serious.”
The Privilges Committee is a committee of the Senate which is supposed to do everything in public. So, where’s Lindeberg’s submission!
The other sting in her advice is her contention that there may be material she examined that the Senate was previously misled which may need to be addressed.
I understand that lying to the Senate is always serious.
Lindeberg has long suggested that the CJC and Queensland Government misled the Senate, on, for example, section 129 of the Criminal Code. Respected judges agree with him.
That’s pretty serious. Lindeberg’s matter has not been before the Senate since 2004. The judges gave their opinion in August 2007.
It seems to me that there is a major issue of the right to know here for all of us. Perhaps a larger article than just these blogs is required to expose this significant development?
Are we being kept in the dark again?
Sun 18 Sep 11 (09:25am)
Natural Justice,
Thanks for providing the link to the Clerk’s advice.
By only quoting the final two words of her sentence and then filling in the dots with your own words you have distorted what she actually said.
The full sentence was (my emphasis) “There is no doubt that the subject matter is very serious.”
And who would argue with that?
Sun 18 Sep 11 (09:37am)
“Where is the enemy” asks NJM. To answer using a famous quote:
“We have met the enemy and he is us”.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (11:55am)
Truth, the word is in Canberra that Xenophon is far from finished with this matter, and, nor, for that matter, is Senator Joyce.
Tony Abbott asked for an investigation in Parliament in June 2008 and referred to the Rofe QC Audit. Nothing’s changed since then. He obviously wants an inquiry because the Coaltion supported Xenophon’s move on 23 June 2011 to establish one.
We now know that the Audit has now been examined by the Clerk of the Senate. Her advice has been made public.
Advice 47 speaks about the legal argument Lindeberg mounted concerning what duty fell on the Senate in regard to holding up Australia’s international and constitutional obligations in respect of the rule of law.
But, whatever, Lindeberg argued, this matter is so serious that it seems reasonable that we ordinary folk should all be able to read what was said for ourselves.
For any of us who have followed this worsening scandal, it’s beyond dispute that what the CJC and Queensland Government told the Senate about section 129 for year after year was wrong.
Retired judges have publicly said that the misinterpretation may have been done deliberately. That’s pretty serious!
It appears that the Clerk is agreeing with that position.
Does that incorrect interpretation put to the Senate by the CJC and the Queensland ALP Governments represent a serious impact on ‘the rule of law?” Lindeberg has long argued that it does.
I recall that Piers asked the question in his last article on this matter after Senator Fielding inexplicably voted on 23 June 2011 to stop an inquiry as to whether or not the Senators were now handling the matter appropriately after such a clear warning from the Clerk.
When you look at what those highly respected judges told Premier Beattie in August 2007, and I understand Bligh too, in their public statement, there seems little doubt it has impacted on respect for the rule of law across the nation.
Here are a couple of passages:
http://www.heineraffair.info/site_pages/legal_opinions.html#judge
”This serious inconsistency in the administration of Queensland’s Criminal Code touching on the fundamental principle of respect for the administration of justice by proper preservation of evidence concerns us because this principle is found in all jurisdictions within in the Commonwealth as it sustains the rule of law generally. ”
And
“We believe that the issues at stake are too compelling to ignore.
We suggest that if the Heiner affair remains in its current unresolved state, it would give reasonable cause for ordinary citizens, especially Queenslanders, to believe that there is one law for them, and another for Executive Government and civil servants.
We find such a prospect unacceptable. ”
For my part, I find it unacceptable if those members of the Senate Privileges Committee and the Clerk know the facts about what is being alleged in this matter and, by some odd decision, we are not being told ourselves.
We are entitled to the truth, and nothing less.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (12:05pm)
Mycroft
Where is the distortion you refer to?
I’ve just read the Clerk’s advice.
The “subject matter” is the Heiner Affair in the context of her advice because she plainly indicates that it is based on Lindeberg’s submission and the 9-volume Rofe QC Audit of the Heiner Affair.
She also specifically refers to earlier Reports by the Privileges Committee on “the subject matter” - and their commonality is “the Heiner Affair”.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (02:06pm)
When will the rule of law apply in Australia?
This is shameful ....
Overseas the Heiner Affair is studied by students.
In Australia a far reaching Left brotherhood strangles each and every attempt to bring Rudd to justice.
“Mr Fixit” jets around the world with his characteristic self-important smile on his face, $1,000,000 cost a year ....
Laughing at us.
JJ.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (03:19pm)
JJ
A slight correction…
The Heiner Affair is now in the Queensland Education syllabus for Years 11 and 12 students, and, it is a subject matter for university students in Australia and around the world wishing to qualify in archives, information management.
And, for those “knockers” - who seem to have disappeared from view, unlike Mr Rudd and others - it is taught as a corruption scandal not as some mad, crackpot, conspiracy theory!
Sun 18 Sep 11 (04:53pm)
Billy,
To say that “the Heiner affair is very serious” carries an implication that a misdeed has occurred whereas to say, as the Clerk has said, “the subject matter is very serious” carries no such implication.
The only way for Julia Gillard to be on the “right side of history” would be for Leftist historians, like Robert Manne, or Leftist pen-pushers, like David Marr, to write it.
Mind you, so many of Australia’s self-styled historians are from the Left and Far Left.
Eccentric Leftist historian Manning Clark, whose anti-heritage influence persists with a reissue of his “History”, would be glowing in his praises of Julia Gillard.
To Clark, the story of Australia’s people and their struggles did not exist, with its own independent dimension and validity; it was mere raw material for a drama to be written by him.
Real historical personages became his characters, to be suitably bent as dramatic circumstances required. Among many others so remodelled were the explorer Ludwig Leichhardt, and prime ministers George Reid and Edmund Barton.
Heavily made over by Clark were R.G. Menzies and H.V. Evatt. The first he portrays as a colonial booby, “grovelling” (a favourite Clark word) to the Brits. Allan Martin’s fine two-volume biography of Menzies proves this to be nonsense.
Evatt, Clark tells us, believed that “Labor was the Magic Flute leading Australia up into the light”; Evatt had “the image of Christ in his heart”.
There is every likelihood that Clark was a lifelong Stalinist. He was recruited to Melbourne’s political science department by Ian Milner, the famous “Rhodes scholar spy”.
After Milner fled to Prague, Clark went to see him there in 1958 and 1964. Strenuous efforts by the Brisbane Courier-Mail in the ‘90s to establish the full details of Clark’s relations with the Soviets are today brushed aside by Macintyre as “an absurdity”; he does not mention Clark’s ‘60s references to Lenin as “Christ-like ... in his compassion ... lovable as a little child.” Lenin?
Andrew Roberts’s A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900 notes Clark’s incapacity to handle mere facts; his failure to provide insightful accounts even of such fundamentals as Federation; his wordy imprecision; his boring and near-psychopathological hatred of England and the English; his enduring Stalinism ("the Communist Party was for many the conscience of Australia").
All this, says Roberts, and more, has over 20 years been “pumped into the Australian academic system”, where much of it still lodges. Roberts, clearly, feels that now may be the time to see Clark and all his works filed away permanently under “Australian intellectual embarrassments”.
Professor Macintyre, the Ernest Scott professor of history at Melbourne University and chairman of Australian Studies at Harvard, was sidelined by the Howard government in its pursuit of a national curriculum for Australian history.
But Professor Macintyre - a former communist - is one of four educators appointed in 2008 to draft “framing documents” setting out a broad direction for the curriculum in four subjects.
A spokeswoman for former Education Minister Julia Gillard at the time said she was confident in the judgment of the NCB, which is independent.
But Wollongong University associate professor in history and politics Greg Melleuish said Professor Macintyre’s appointment was akin to the Howard government appointing Keith Windschuttle, noted for his questioning of the Aboriginal genocide.
“They seem to have selected the person who is most likely to raise the hackles on the other side,” he said.
“I would have thought it incumbent on whatever government it was, particularly in history, to try to depoliticise the process and Professor Macintyre’s appointment won’t do that.”
Henry Reynolds, the venerable historian of the Left, whose depiction of a brutal British conquest of Tasmania had been the accepted norm, was questioned by Keith Windschuttle, who struck at the heart of the accepted view of Australian colonial history in the past 30 years—that the settler society had engaged in a pattern of conquest, dispossession and killing of the indigenous inhabitants. The facts, he said, did not stack up.
Napoleon Bonaparte once said: “What is history but a fable agreed upon?”
In Australia, agreeing upon the fable has proved more difficult that it has in other countries. Our leading historians have often been inclined to just fabricate history as if a novelist.
Robert Manne typifies just how meaningless qualifications have become in Australia. Although Manne is considered one of Australia’s leading intellectuals, has received significant funding to write about history, and is a professor at La Trobe University, he has no qualifications in history.
In fact, he doesn’t even have the post-graduate qualifications usually required to work at university. He did a Bachelor of Arts at Melbourne University then a Bachelor of Philosophy at Oxford.
He then did some work in the media and became useful for the public relations of the left, which in turn led to his university appointment.
Although Geoffrey Blainey’s books were influential, arguably it was his comments on other historians that brought him the most fame. In 1993, he coined the phrase “black armband view of history”. The term referred to those left wing historians who seemed to be writing about Australian history while wearing a black arm band of mourning, grieving, or shame.
Blainey contrasted the black-arm band view to the Three Cheers view of history that was common in most countries around the world.
Geoffrey Blainy’s black arm band comment elicited the antagonism of his colleagues. He was subsequently redefined as a kind of heartless right-wing ogre.
As a former Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Melbourne, and member of the Communist Party of Australia, Stuart Macintyre’s interpretation of Australian history has been extreme left-wing. Although left-wing means different things to different people, Stuart Macintyre’s brand of the left does seem to smell of all historians being equal, but some being more equal than others.
The perception that Macintyre weaves is that the left-wing orthodox strain of history has been governed by love, and an objective quest for the truth, while all those who have challenged it, or have kept the left honest, have been governed by a mean spirit, and/or falsification of evidence.
To launch the book, Macintyre enlisted former Labor Prime Minister Paul Keating. Keating used the opportunity to belittle John Howard - the man who replaced him as PM.
To return to the topic - How Will History Judge Julia Gillard…
How indeed. But given historians propensity for lionizing failures and demonizing successes, she will probably come up smelling of roses.
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:42pm)
Sun 18 Sep 11 (01:41am)
But Professor Macintyre - a former communist - is one of four educators appointed in 2008 to draft “framing documents” setting out a broad direction for the curriculum in four subjects.
A spokeswoman for former Education Minister Julia Gillard at the time said she was confident in the judgment of the NCB, which is independent.
That’s the “real Julia”, the one who oversaw the appointment of MacIntyre, the one who is more passionate about education than anything else. She understands the left’s best chance of realising its long term goals is through indoctrination. And, as Piers alluded to when he wrote
But Gillard and her dwindling band of true believers, mainly ignorant members of Gen X and Gen Y who were drip-fed Green-Left garbage by members of the hard-Left teachers’ union
it’s a strategy that appears to be paying dividends. Here’s an example of the Australian Curriculum Authority’s more recent work:
Silence from Gillard on that. Of course, she has previously attempted to pass herself off as a cultural traditionalist by stating that it is important for people to understand the Bible. Whatever it takes.
Our leading historians have often been inclined to just fabricate history as if a novelist.
Alleged to be an example of MacIntyre’s - or possibly Manne’s - faithfulness to history in a lecture to students:
http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151637/for-the-confederacy
Sun 18 Sep 11 (05:55am)
Thanks for that Hugh, an interesting read.
On Gillard, her worthless legacy: a lesson for all of us; be extremely wary of whom you vote for, check’em out, this small nation can ill afford experimenting with self-centered deceitful ideologues… history will inform and educate future generations if it is not clouded by shady opinion; another reason to be wary of whom is writing what… check out the authors history if in doubt.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (12:22pm)
Thank you so much Hugh for all your wonderful contributions to this blog. 
My first love was history. My second is my husband. I do miss history in my life. I get to see Mr Laura every day! 
Have you caught up with the editor of The Australian, Chris Mitchell’s article on Robert Manne? And the article by Paul Kelly on him? I imagine Mr Robert will have conniptions after reading them. I used to have a high regard for Robert Manne, back in the days of his discussions on the Helen Demidenko/Darville hoax. Now I’m sickened by him. I had no idea about his lack of ‘proper’ qualifications in history.
Re Miss Gillard and history: our PM is already on the wrong side of everything, so it’s hard to see how any historian would be willing to put his/her credibility on the line by doing a gloss job on Gillard. But who knows what time and a nice little financial package will do!
Hugh maybe you can write the first great tome on our PM and call it, ‘The Incompetent Years: Julia Gillard and her missing legacy’.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (12:56pm)
Hugh:
The elevation of Manning Clark, Manne, McIntyre to the status of some sort of supreme beings in the hierarchy of Australian ‘intellectuals’ is just part of Labor’s eternal project that attempts to build some heroic mythology [aka lies] as cover for its own sordid history.
Despite the revelations in the Venona Papers, of Labor’s association with, and facilitation of traitors with allegiance to the Soviet Union, and despite all of the thuggery and corruption that has been a large part of their trademark to this very day, it’s always Labor that is given credibility and attributed with the highest motives on so many issues by the MSM, and conversely always the Coalition that is treated with suspicion, scepticism and derision. This is not because the MSM has been misled by Labor mythologists---it’s because they are [ almost all of them] , in the service of the Left---no other conclusion is credible.
Labor’s appointment of the ‘former’ Communist Macintyre to draft the new curriculum, is entirely in line with their usual practice.
Laurie Carmichael , Australia’s most prominent Communist at the time was appointed to head Australia’s national curriculum directorate or part of it, and later the late Garth Boomer was appointed to the top position on the national curriculum directorate, on the strength of his writings and his ‘education guru/icon ‘ status with the hard Left.
Some of his publications were in collaboration with one of Labor’s favourite feminists, Dale Spender, wherein they derided the idea of teaching grammar, and called for its banishment from the Australian schools curriculum. Their book was full of Marxist references and jargon ,and they took the view that children should not be taught to read if they didn’t want to---that ‘rebellious illiteracy’ was an entirely acceptable option—that children shouldn’t be required ‘to jump through middle class hoops’ etc etc.
And of course , as we all know, the teaching of grammar, punctuation etc, were banished from the Australian curriculum, and a whole generation crippled in their literacy skills.
I think Boomer had second thoughts before his death, and recanted somewhat---but many others in the education Left , like Mary Kalantzis and Brian Cambourne et al took the idea and ran with it.
Of course the MSM pretends that this criminal ‘mistake’ [aka wanton Marxist socialist engineering, playing fast and loose with Australian children’s lives] never happened, and people like Paul Kelly and most of the MSM , in a further assault on Australian democracy, unfailingly give Labor the moral and political high ground on education, even when reporting on the damage that was caused,[ allowing Labor to pretend the Liberals did it ] and the humungous if not impossible task of rectifying it.
I think your last sentence is correct. But the reason they lionize the many failures is because the only historians really given credibility are of the Left, and the failures are Labor’s ----- and the reason they can’t bring themselves to applaud the successes is that the successes are the Coalition’s.
Sun 18 Sep 11 (03:16pm)
There’s trouble at the fortress:
History at Melbourne University is in crisis. And the descent has apparently been rapid.
Good question:
How can the discipline of history in what aims to be one of the world’s top-50 universities (!) be taken seriously when, for example, there is no British history, no Early Modern-Modern European history until the 20th century (the inevitable fascism, Nazism, communism)? – and virtually no economic history, no interest in high politics or diplomatic history or imperial/commonwealth history, little in political history, etc., etc. Tastes change, but I find far more interesting stuff in the syllabus at Aberystwyth (a much smaller, lower-middle ranking institution with a history department of comparable size) than Melbourne.
The alarmist clock is still ringing
Miranda Devine – Saturday, September 17, 11 (08:12 pm)
AS if Al Gore’s last apocalyptic PowerPoint presentation wasn’t boring and deceptive enough, he had to go and do it all again - for a marathon 24 hours.
Time they started locking up these fruitcakes,,,,,,,has the human race gone completely nuts??
Sat 17 Sep 11 (08:27pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:34pm)
Gore has prospered since becoming a laughing stock. He is very rich, highly lauded and a fool. I don’t think his side likes him. I think they get money being with him.
I am still waiting for my money from big oil. I have been spruiking the advantages of nuclear and coal over solar and wind for more than a decade. I tell people the facts. I point to carbon dioxide being plant food, and nuclear power being safer than wind or solar. Just google David Daniel Ball. I am easy to find.
Do you think it could be early on-set dementia?
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:03pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:35pm)
I think Gore profits from flying jets to warn people about flying jets.
What a load of journalistic vandalism. What a disgusting, ill minded person you must be! A one sided story with with no substance or contrary argument. What happened to you in your childhood ?
Sat 17 Sep 11 (09:29pm)
Sat 17 Sep 11 (10:32pm)
What is wrong? You sound befuddled. It seems logical and balanced to me.
Thomas Sowell argues that “there was no Great Depression until AFTER politicians started intervening in the economy.”
There was a stock market crash in October 1929 and unemployment shot up to 9 percent — for one month. Then unemployment started drifting back down until it was 6.3 percent in June 1930, when the first major federal intervention took place.
That was the Smoot-Hawley tariff bill, which more than a thousand economists across the country pleaded with Congress and President Hoover not to enact. But then, as now, politicians decided that they had to “do something.”
Within 6 months, unemployment hit double digits. Then, as now, when “doing something” made things worse, many felt that the answer was to do something more.
Both President Hoover and President Roosevelt did more — and more, and more. Unemployment remained in double digits for the entire remainder of the decade. Indeed, unemployment topped 20 percent and remained there for 35 months, stretching from the Hoover administration into the Roosevelt administration.
Sowell is correct generally – correct that government interventions and other failures put the “Great” in the “Great Depression” – but he is incorrect in his suggestion that Smoot-Hawley did much to spark such a major increase in unemployment. Smoot-Hawley certainly didn’t help matters, and likely hurt just a bit. But as Doug Irwin argues in his new book Peddling Protectionism, foreign trade was too small a part of America’s economy in 1930 to have enabled Smoot-Hawley – as ill-advised as it unquestionably was – to be a major factor in deepening and prolonging the Great Depression.
A far worse government failure than Smoot-Hawley was the “Great Contraction” – the Fed allowing the money supply to fall by one-third between 1930 and 1933. And, following this calamity, an even more destructive curse descended on America: FDR’s New Dealing hyperactivity in which his Trusted Brains cartelized industries, destroyed agricultural products, attempted artificially to raise prices (in the wake of the Great Contraction, no less!), launched entirely new regulatory agencies headed either by Geniuses or by cronies, spent and ran up government debt orgiastically, pumped labor unions with more arbitrary power to behave monopolistically, and demonized entrepreneurs and industrialists.
The regime uncertainty unleashed by this earthquake of arrogance ought to be – but, sadly, isn’t – a sufficient warning to avoid such mistakes today.
The great Bruce Yandle – Emeritus Professor of Economics at Clemson University – is interviewed in the current issue of the Richmond Fed’s Region Focus. One of the finest privileges of my life was being Bruce’s colleague at Clemson for five wonderful years.
Here’s a video contest for you creative students!
Carpe Diem’s Mark Perry explains that trade is always balanced.
The editors at the Wall Street Journal rightly criticize Mitt Romney for his economically uninformed – but obviously politically motivated – criticisms of Beijing’s monetary policy. Listening to politicians address economic issues is like listening to astrologers talk about the physics of the formation of stars.
The September 2011 issue of The Freeman is, as is typical of each issue of this superb publication edited by Sheldon Richman, loaded with great material. At the risk of unintentionally insulting some authors, though, I want especially to recommend the powerful essay by Cato’s David Boaz on the outlandish and evil ‘war on drugs,’ and the essay by Freeman columnist and historian Burt Folsom on the Great Depression.
And George Will discusses “our floundering ‘federal family’.”
I agree – with an important caveat – with Bryan Caplan’s post on his refusal to respect “the law” simply because it’s the law. My caveat – one pointed out by some commenters to Bryan’s post – is that law is not at all the same thing as legislation. Law deserves far more respect (although, still, not respect given mindlessly) than does legislation; indeed, legislation, by its very nature, is frequently used to break the law. For example, Jim Crow legislation in the late 19th-century American south broke the law that effectively enforced racial desegregation on streetcars.
One of the greatest dangers unleashed by modern language is the treatment of “legislation” and “law” as synonyms for each other – and, hence, the bestowal on legislation of the genuine respect that is due to law.
This theme, explained well in the first volume of Hayek’s Law, Legislation, and Liberty, is the subject of this talk that I gave last October to the GMU Economics Society and the Future of Freedom Foundation.
And here’s a short letter that I wrote a few years ago on this topic.
… is Art. 1, Sec. 8 of the United States Constitution:
Section. 8.The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
To provide and maintain a Navy;
To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and forgoverning such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings; — And
To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.
Three years after scrapping what worked, Labor has no alternative
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (01:58 pm)
So what is Julia Gillard’s plan D?
As well, the coalition has warned its support for the changes is “exceptionally unlikely” because the draft laws strip protections for asylum-seekers.
Labor’s Left faction will meet in Canberra tomorrow to discuss proposed legislative changes to the Migration Act, released by the government late on Friday.
Left MPs are concerned the changes remove completely Australia’s obligations under the 60-year-old UN convention on refugees.
They say the changes would remove legal protections and Australia’s obligations to refugees.
The coalition is saying much the same thing.
Milne will drink to that
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (09:51 am)
From the website of the Greens, of which the deputy leader is Christine Milne:
Bottled water is an unjustified luxury that, except for essential safety or medical reasons, is simply a fashion statement roaming free of environmental responsibility.
(Thanks to reader JB.)
Coaching the real Julia to death
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (06:06 am)
Whatever the presentation guru produced, it seems a lot less of the “real Julia”:
The Sunday Telegraph can reveal the Prime Minister has undertaken intensive coaching at Kirribilli House with a renowned “leadership skills trainer”.Ms Gillard, who has struggled to translate her feisty parliamentary performances into convincing interviews and speeches, took the crash course ahead of two major prime ministerial addresses.
Image Media Services trainer Mike Macnamara met with Ms Gillard just days before she delivered her nationally televised address to the nation spruiking the carbon tax.The lesson also came on the eve of the PM’s speech at the NSW Labor conference in July.
Despite Mr Macnamara’s expertise in “media interview technique and stand and deliver presentation skills”, Ms Gillard’s televised address received mixed reviews, with some labelling it wooden and overly scripted. And her speech to the party faithful was also oddly subdued.Observers have noted that Ms Gillard, who has battled critics mocking her broad accent throughout her political career, has markedly slowed her delivery during speeches.
Williamson to be “forced to resign” a Labor vice president
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (05:56 am)
But doesn’t Williamson deserve “full; confidence”, like his protege Craig Thomson?
MICHAEL WILLIAMSON will be forced to resign from his role on the Australian Labor Party national executive in the next few days.
Mr Williamson is still the president of the Health Services Union, which disaffiliated itself from the ALP on Friday as it battles allegations of misuse of credit cards from senior leaders.
But he remains a vice-president of the ALP, a non-voting position…The Sydney Morning Herald has reported that Mr Williamson and the Labor MP Craig Thomson, a former HSU official, received secret commissions from a union contractor. Both men deny the allegation…
Mr Williamson, 58, has not been in contact with party officials yet. However, officials said yesterday if he did not offer his resignation over the weekend, he would be contacted ‘’on Monday or Tuesday’’.
I doubt this kind of thing stops at the HSU. Time to consider an inquiry.
(No comments for legal reasons.)
Abbott will say no, and Labor won’t have a Malaysian Solution
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (05:53 am)
So what’s Labor’s Plan G?
The Government plans to introduce changes to the Migration Act in parliament this week that would give the Immigration Minister power to send asylum seekers to foreign lands without human rights protection guarantees....
Prime Minister Julia Gillard has invited Mr Abbott for a meeting tomorrow in an attempt to win his party’s backing. But Mr Abbott said he only accepted the invitation out of “courtesy” to the Prime Minister…
“If we say no to this legislation, it will be because we are saying yes to basic standards of human decency in the way people are treated,” Mr Abbott said.
But it’s never old news when it’s Palin
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (05:37 am)
Reporters get sacked for trying to discuss Julia Gillard’s professional and personal relationship with a union conman 15 years ago, but The Age is perfectly happy to retail gossip of who Sarah Palin was sleeping with back then:
Author Joe McGinniss claimed that, as a young television sports reporter, and while she was dating Todd, her husband-to-be, Mrs Palin had a one-night stand with Glen Rice, then a rising college basketball player and now a leading NBA pro.... in 1996. He also cites one or more witnesses who said they saw Sarah and Todd snorting cocaine ...
(No comments for legal reasons.)
Was it a dream, that Liberals won the Victorian election?
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (05:27 am)
This sounds ominous, and will deflate the Liberals MPs who thought they were in politics to fight for conservative values, such as maintaining the proper authority of the elected over the unelected::
TED Baillieu will keep Victoria’s human rights charter and does not intend to significantly wind back the legislation, despite the urgings of a parliamentary committee and some of his own MPs.
After a five-month review, a Coalition-dominated parliamentary committee has called for several changes to the contentious charter of human rights, including dismantling the role of courts and tribunals that help implement it. Under the proposals, government departments and public agencies would also have no obligations to act compatibly with human rights and there would be no legal remedies for people who felt their rights had been breached.
The recommendations were put forward by the Liberal-National dominated scrutiny of acts and regulations committee and have once again polarised MPs in the Coalition’s ranks.But Mr Baillieu has distanced himself from the report, issuing a carefully worded statement which noted ‘’the views expressed in the SARC report are those of the cross-party committee members and not necessarily those of the Coalition government’’.
What justifies the secrecy about this missing SIEV?
Andrew Bolt – Sunday, September 18, 11 (05:18 am)
What “operational reasons” could justify this refusal to tell?
THE Customs and Border Protection Agency is under pressure to reveal all it knows about a missing asylum seeker boat carrying 105 Hazaras from Afghanistan after being accused of giving contradictory evidence to Federal Parliament.
The head of Customs, Michael Carmody, told a Senate estimates committee last year that ‘’we did not have a precise location’’ for the boat, which went missing in October 2009.
But in an answer to a question on notice this month, the agency revealed that the co-ordinates of the boat had been passed to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority.In his comments to Senate estimates, Mr Carmody had also said: ‘’Perhaps this is more appropriate for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, but there were further approaches from people requesting that we do something about this vessel and the people on it.’’
Customs has told The Sun-Herald that it would not reveal how it knew the boat was in distress for ‘’operational’’ and ‘’intelligence’’ reasons.
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