One of the benefits for me of not being in Parliament has been the chance to get more directly involved in community based organisations. One of those I have got more involved in over the past year or so is the Queensland branch of Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation (usually known as ANTaR). ANTaR started in the 1990s and has maintained a continuing role in promoting better community ...
There have been a few developments since I wrote my previous post about the uncertainty surroundnig Queensland's abortion laws. A 'technical' amendment to the law was rushed through State Parliament giving the same protection for surgeons for medical abortions as currently exists for surgical abortions. Both major parties managed to avoid having the amendment considered a conscience vote, using the rather curious argument that "the amendment did not ...
Queensland Parliament has no choice but to act on abortion laws The Queensland government has tried their best for a quite a few years to ignore the calls to change the state’s laws on abortion. However, whatever your views are on abortion, the issue in Queensland can no longer be avoided by the Queensland Parliament. The situation for individual women seeking an abortion and for doctors prepared to provide it ...
One of the interesting things about blogging is that you can never tell which posts are going to attract interest, or when. Today I appeared on ABC Radio National’s Australia Talks, giving my views on the issue of hearing loss. This is the second time I’ve done an extended media interview on this topic in the last year or so. Both times I was approached solely as a result of this ...
A Parliamentary Breakfast was held this morning to raise awareness of and support for autism. Breakfast functions arranged by community organisations are a regular feature at Parliament House. They are usually a straight-forward occasion, going for about an hour from 7.30, with a few speakers and some information about the topic. The speakers at this one included Katherine Annear (an adult with ASD) and John Doyle (better known ...
Over two years ago, I wrote a piece on this blog about hearing loss. I’ve raised it once or twice in speeches and in the Senate since then, but it’s still an issue which doesn’t have a particularly high public profile, despite the very large numbers of being affected – estimated to currently be about one in six Australians, rising to about one in four by 2050. My blog ...
I'm in Darwin at the moment for Committee hearings into two separate private Senators' Bills. One, introduced by Bob Brown, is aimed at restoring the right of the Northern Territory Parliament to legislate in areas relating to euthanasia. The other was introduced by me and is aimed at instituting a national system for providing compensation to the Stolen Generations. Unfortunately, being in Darwin means I had to miss ...
Another candidates’ forum and yet again no Liberal Party representative attended. This forum was on Higher Education issues at the University of Queensland, in the heart of the electorate of Ryan. Despite being won briefly by Labor as a result of a by-election protest vote at the start of 2001, this seat is Liberal heartland. It currently has a margin of a little over ten per cent. There has ...
There have been a lot of reports highlighting the disgraceful situation with the health of many Indigenous Australians. It is important to be aware of this situation, but it can sometimes make the problem seem insurmountable, which can create a view that it's all too hard. In a positive move, ANTaR (Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation) launched a report in Canberra today detailing some of the ...
A couple of weeks ago I attended the launch of the Close the Gap campaign – to eliminate the gap between the life expectancy and opportunities for Indigenous Australians and the rest of our nation. It was held at the Olympic Stadium in Sydney, and there was a big media contingent there in part due to the presence of Olympic champions Cathy Freeman and Ian Thorpe, who were both ...
Whilst John Howard preaches in the media fairly regularly about issues relating to migrants, migration, asylum seekers and citizenship, occasionally he makes statements which suggest he doesn’t really know much about the details of how our migration laws work or the nature of our migrant intake these days. I did a post on such an instance some time ago. His recent off the cuff comment in a radio ...
Just over a year ago I wrote about a Senate Committee inquiry into petrol sniffing. As my comments at the time suggested, I was uncertain how much value would come out of the inquiry, given the number of similar inquiries which had preceded it. However, it does appear to have been some significant steps forward since then. I have been hearing some good feedback from ...
I’ll be travelling all this week through various places in the Gulf and Cape York, so there may be fewer new posts on this site than usual. To fill the empty void in your life that this may cause, you might wish to look at sponsoring someone in the Leukaemia Foundation’s “World’s Greatest Shave”. I’d do it myself, but having a bald head in an election ...
Amongst all my activities, I try to meet reasonably regularly with a range of community organisations to help keep me in better touch with some of the issues at community level. Even if there is no immediate issue I can assist them with, it is always useful for me to get a better understanding of their activities and concerns, and to get more aware of the specific ...
From a public and media point of view, the cloning/stem cell debate has been and gone in Australia, with legislation allowing such research passing both houses of Parliament in December. In the months leading up to the vote in the Senate, I wrote a number of times on this blog about my thoughts, and sought the views of the public. I also got myself some negative media by ...
Changes are being made in NSW to laws governing P plate drivers –people who have newly acquired their driver’s licence. These include novice drivers being able to carry no more than one young passenger late at night, and an automatic loss of licence with a single speeding offence. This is an issue where the principle of individual freedom comes up against the principle of the wider public good. We ...
When I talk about animal welfare issues, I often feel I am running the risk that I will be accused of being more concerned about (non-human) animals than about humans. This is doubly so when I talk about the use of animals in experimentation. It was therefore irritating, although not totally surprising, that the “Hands Off Our Ovaries” group recently put out a media release saying “Senator Bartlett ...
As we move towards the last two weeks of Senate sittings for 2006, the government is adopting the traditional pre-Christmas practice of piling up a list of ‘urgent’ Bills which must be passed in the final fortnight. In the past the Senate was able to determine which of these Bills were really urgent and which was were just try-ons in an effort to push things through without decent scrutiny ...
Welcome news this week that there has been a very significant drop in Australia's suicide rate was tempered by the stark finding that suicide rates amongst indigenous men is increasing sharply. According to this report, the Medical Journal of Australia says the number of Australians who took their own lives fell from 2720 in 1994 to 2098 in 2004. However, this report says the suicide rate amongst indigenous men ...
I've been open in recent years about the fact that I have depression and I am always interested in how it is perceived, portrayed and dealt with. I was reading an article in the weekend papers on the very popular Hillsong pentecostal churches in Sydney. They are seen to have sufficient clout that in recent times they have had visits and speeches from the Prime Minister, the Treasurer ...
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This line from David Marr is one of the best descriptions I’ve ever read of the farcical sound and fury which is Question Time in the House of Representatives:
It’s a bit like an RSPCA pound: never free of the spectre of being put down, the dogs bark and howl to attract attention.(0)
For those interested in basic facts about temperature trends in Australia and globally over recent decades, there is a great post over at Lavartus Prodeo by Brian Banisch, who has been following the data and the various scientific reports on this issue for a long time. Very much worth having a read of for those who are just wanting some facts.
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Many not for profit and charity groups have got a lot smarter over the years in tapping into some of the large amounts of money that get spent over Christmas. Christmas catalogues full of gifts for good cause groups have become widespread. In recent times, that has extended to bypassing a present all together, and giving someone a donation which actually goes direct to the good cause. This form of fundraising is now also tapping into social media, so much so that even my humble blog gets occasional requests to promote a cause from people who specifically target the avenues of social media to widen their reach. Here’s one example I recently received on behalf of World Vision.
More... (4)I’ve posted a piece over at The Stump about the links between global hunger and climate change, and the unfortunate parallels between the less than successful climate change summit in Copenhagen and an even more dismal outcome at the recent Hunger Summit in Rome, which received far less attention.
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Following are links to some items I’ve had published on other sites
More... (0)Disclaimer: The inclusion of a blog or website in this list should not be taken as an endorsement of its contents by me.
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