Monday 29th of April 2024
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clown of queensland...

clown of queensland
Last week's Council of Australian Governments was diverted, for a while, by Joh Bjelke-Petersen-style grandstanding by Queensland Premier Campbell Newman, who wants a specifically Queensland process for changing the order of succession for the title of Queen of Queensland.

If Newman looked through the state papers and saw what the Queen herself thought of such pretensions from Queensland premiers and governors, he might shut up. Progress with the Australia Acts was not delayed so much by Queensland's filibustering but by the palace's determination that it never be put in a position of having to accept advice from any Queensland premier ever - other than the very minimum of rubber-stamping an appointment of the poor gel, or boy, mad enough to accept the post of governor.

The Queen must be given the credit not only for recognising clowns when she sees them, but for understanding that, in some climes, the tendency for delusions of grandeur is more pronounced.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/behind-abbotts-royal-tug-of-war-20130423-2id62.html#ixzz2RKlwaPwy

bring on the republic !!!!

THE BRIEF hospitalisation of the Australian head of state in a London hospital over last weekend must surely now indicate it is high time the debate on when this country becomes a republic is reignited.

Ever since the hijacked Howard referendum delivered a negative result, the local republicans have left the running on the matter to the monarchists and a day doesn’t pass that the head of Australians for Constitutional Monarchy (ACM) David Flint isn’t in full feline – and in the main irrelevant flight – saving this moribund and internationally embarrassing system of government which is shackled to an out of date Constitution.

Only this week, Mr Flint was lampooning the treasurer of Australia for having the temerity to call for a rethink and of the system under which we live.

Flint referred to Treasurer Swan as “His Munificence”, which would have Sydney’s blue rinse set screaming with laughter and all those poor old dears reaching for their dictionaries to find the meaning of munificence and then saying: “Oh, that Mr Flint is SO very funny, isn’t he?”

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/australian-identity/republic/time-for-an-australian-republic/

the queensland petri-dish...

 

When you grow up in Queensland, it’s a given that your experience of politics is going to be a little different to the rest of the country. To my friends and I, politicians like Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Pauline Hanson and later, Bob Katter, were like eccentric aunts and uncles who our parents made fun of, but whose rules we had to follow nonetheless.

I left my hometown for Melbourne just after Anna Bligh became our first female Premier. From my new home, I still couldn’t help but feel a twinge of pride when she oversaw the passing of a same-sex marriage bill, and again when she conducted herself with such aplomb during the 2011 floods. I didn’t have to be ashamed of Queensland politics any longer. Then, when the Labor Party was spectacularly defeated and Campbell Newman began his reign of terror, I was shocked, but also weirdly happy. I figured that Queensland would serve as an experiment, a failed one, about life under a Liberal Party government. Queensland would be a petri dish, where a gross, harmful bacteria bubbled away, and as soon as anybody looked at it closely they would realise it could never be allowed to spread.

The experiment started out well. One of Newman’s first acts of business was to pass the Civil Partnerships and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2012, ensuring that same-sex partners are no longer allowed to have a civil union but instead register their relationship, affording them the same rights as stray dogs. Newman then turned his attention from the gays to the arts and axed the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards.

read more: http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/michaela-mcguire/2013/04/22/1366593799/queensland-experiment

 

monarchy VS the plebs in the sunny state...

 

(Callow fanatical monarchist Queensland Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie is reported to have used doctored survey figures to justify moving Labour Day rather than the irrelevant Queen’s Birthday holiday.)

For Labour Day is not a celebration of militant trade unionism. It is not a conga-line of left-wing ratbags winding their way through the streets chanting slogans calling for the downfall of capitalism. Labour Day, particularly in today’s world – where ordinary hard-working people are increasingly left bleeding on the economic roadside from collateral damage inflicted by the global recession – it is about family, freedom, and a fair go. It is about empowerment in a world where individuals still too often have little control over their own destiny when it comes to the workplace.

So celebrate Labour Day. Celebrate trade unions, freedom of association, vigorous debate and working families. For that is the sum of us.

(This is an edited version of the 2013 Alex Macdonald Lecture Labour Day: Family, freedom and a fair go. The origins to Queensland’s Labour Day and the recent shift of date delivered to the Brisbane Labour History Association on 1 May 2013 by Dr Glenn Davies)

http://www.independentaustralia.net/2013/australian-identity/queensland/labour-day-is-here-to-stay/

You won't have to remind me not to visit Queensland... Labor Day on the first of May is a date for workers around the world... The Queen's birthday is never on her real birthday...