Buyer's Remorse, Reproductive Rights

[tcpip]

One of the better achievements of the last Federal Labor government was managing to get the Gonski education reforms approved by the state governments. Now this going to be all undone. Richard O'Brien (FB) has a few choice words to say on the matter. This follows a notable lack of diplomacy in foreign affairs, and impending doom with proposed changes to the NBN. All in all, it's becoming a boulervard of broken promises, with a some indication that "buyer's remorse" has set in already. Well, just imagine what the next three years are going to be like.

In more local matters, it seems that the state government (no doubt with some support from knuckle-draggers in the ALP) will be attempting to recriminalise abortion. The Victorian Secular Lobby will be meeting to discuss this. Part of the problem of course is that people of certain strong religious persuasions hold the sanctity of life as being the most important moral standard, independently of whether it is a good life, a safe life, or the costs of other lives (it gets really confusing when the same people support the death penalty) - hence absolutely crazy situations such as the Baby K case where there was legal enforcement to keep a child alive who had no brain. Arguably the child then went on to become a member of the Victorian State Parliament.

Comments

[zenicurean.livejournal.com]

Would it be considered appropriate for media to ask Rudd for comments on the phone tapping thing? This was 2009, after all.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

That would certainly be justified - one does want to know why Australia saw need to tap the 'phones of a neighbouring head of state.

[botrytis.livejournal.com]

Why then, or why in general? I would have assumed that there would be some level of spying going in both directions. That it reached the level of phone tapping - I'm not sure if we should be surprised or not.

[tcpip.livejournal.com]

Intelligence gathering and analysis is typical by any state. But that's based on material that's on the public record. There was something happening in 2009, which as the Snowden documents reveal, required convert spying.