Cory Bernardi

Parliamentary Pressure Cooker

Parliament has resumed for 2012 and the political temperature has not cooled since we left last year. The pressure is already starting to show within the Labor-Greens alliance as Labor leadership tensions take hold.

That Kevin Rudd still covets the job of Prime Minister is no surprise to political observers. He has not cauterised the deep wounds left from his brutal political butchering at the hands of Julia Gillard and the faceless men of the Labor Party. The fact that many of those faceless men are prepared to even consider reinstalling Rudd as leader says a great deal about the parlous state of our federal government.

Notwithstanding the perverse pleasure in observing the leadership woes of the Labor Party, it is morbidly fascinating to see the desperate scramble by Greens leader Bob Brown to vigorously defend the power that was handed to him by Julia Gillard.

Only weeks ago, Brown was attacking Gillard for being duplicitous and breaking her word in respect to logging. Now that she is under fire from within, in a transparent bid to keep her in power (so he can remain in charge) he has now denied any broken agreement.

In fact, Brown has actually condemned any criticism of Prime Minister Gillard as ‘sexist’; further evidence that those devoid of any coherent or logically persuasive argument resort to name calling with the preferred tags being ‘racist’ and ‘sexist’. In the PC world, these are almost guaranteed to silence any dissent from those that fear the associated character assassination.

That such slurs are most often levelled by the Australian Greens should come as no surprise. They loathe freedom of speech and freedom of thought - except when it applies to their own world view. Any questioning of their counter culture agenda is deemed ‘hate speech’ and holding them to account for their policy failures is being ‘extreme’.

But the Australian people are waking up to the dangerous agenda put forward by the Labor Party and the Greens. Whatever their rhetoric, the end game is bigger government, higher taxes and a growing public debt. Ultimately the result is a dysfunctional, inefficient and stifling government which creates a less prosperous society.

The evidence of this end game is overwhelming. We had zero jobs growth nationally in the last year, our national debt has grown to over $160 billion, cost of living increases are crippling household budgets and business investment is gradually drying up. These are all a direct result of the policies of the past four years.

That the Labor-Greens alliance will not take responsibility for these massive failures is a sad indictment on the character of the players involved.

The rarest words in politics are those uttered accepting responsibility and yet they are the words the public are craving most to hear.

Although perhaps not as much as hearing the Prime Minister call an immediate election!

How Did the Political Left Get it so Wrong?

At some point in the past few decades, the word ‘conservative’ became a pejorative slur. That’s because the few conservatives prepared to identify as such in public refused to bow down to the new orthodoxy of the left.

Now it seems that almost every one of the left’s sacred cows is being slaughtered on the altar of common sense.

Consider some of the hardest fought battles over the past 30 years: climate change, big government, welfare dependency and multiculturalism. Then reflect on the left’s arrogance in dismissing any challenge or warning about the possible negative implications of their world view.

Every passing day provides further evidence of the folly of the left policy agenda and the falsehoods it is built upon.

In respect to climate change, the planet stubbornly refuses to warm, the polar bears are inconveniently (for the eco-zealots) still with us and the green jobs have failed to materialise. The government funded computer models predicting apocalypse are repeatedly wrong. It is clear they have often been based on doctored data and ‘curve fitted’ to suit the preferred political outcome. Despite this, we are still expected to respect the ‘authority’ of these new style snake oil salesmen purporting to be experts.

Perhaps the worst offenders are the political leaders who use enviro-cred as an excuse to get their hands on more taxpayers’ money. We have been told repeatedly that Spain and California are great examples of economies creating green jobs and are a stunning model of what the new world should be. Both are now effectively broke with Spain recording 23 per cent unemployment and businesses fleeing California in record numbers.

The leftists will say it isn’t the green policies that caused this economic calamity but that conveniently ignores the hundreds of billions of dollars in government subsidies wasted on uneconomic utopian green dreams.

Then reality hit (or should I say that green socialism was mugged in the same way that all socialism is);  sooner or later you run out of someone else’s money to spend.

Throughout history it has been demonstrated that any government that becomes too big eventually is forced to accrue a level of debt that cannot be sustained. This is usually a result of their attempts to buy the support of the public by making them increasingly reliant on the largess of the state. Handouts, subsidies and ever increasing social welfare programs are continually introduced to placate almost any hardship or redress some perceived ‘social injustice’.

Naturally this is part of the leftist program to place the state as the primary benevolent institution on which dependence would grow, replacing individual self-determination with ‘bureaucrat knows best’.

Thus the cycle of welfare dependency grows in sync with the growth of government, neither of which are sustainable. As more is given by government, they are also forced to take more from those still striving to make an independent living.

When the taxpayer-filled ATM is empty, the government borrows, thereby mortgaging the future earnings of successive generations until it can no longer stand.

This is exactly what is eventuating in places like Greece. The entitlement mentality of lifetime pensions, state jobs and inefficient state owned industries have left the entire country in an invidious position. Default on debts means austerity for many years to come. Budget cuts will generate a similar downturn and wholesale societal reform could lead to a revolution. The end result could be the collapse of the Euro and the European Union in their current forms.

Of course, the conservatives warned about the folly of centralising European bureaucracy and the monetary union of disparate economies when they were first proposed. These voices of common sense were condemned as flat-earthers and isolationists by the left theoreticians.

Interestingly, I suspect none of these wreckers will apologise for being so wrong, instead justifying their blind stupidity on a failure to create even greater centralisation of power.

Trust me; that will be their next proposal.

So too are the intellectual elite blind to the failure of their policy of multiculturalism. Any critical examination of Europe confirms this judgement but somehow, here in Australia the result will be different.

How do I know that? Well, the left and the apologists keep telling us how wonderful we have it here in Australia with everyone getting along splendidly. This conveniently ignores the race riots, demands for legal plurality and loss of freedom of speech lest anyone actually be offended by some hard truths.

Sorry, it’s not that no-one can be offended any more because offence only goes one way.  Feel free to say whatever you like about a white Christian man – apparently they have no feelings. A pro-life woman is also fair game for public abuse but anyone supporting the killing of unborn children or noticeably ‘of the left’ is off limits in this new public blood sport.

We should be appalled that recent racial unrest was actually fuelled by government and union staffers linked to the most powerful political office in the land.

These are the same types so captured by political correctness that they are unable or unwilling to see the difference between the policy approach of decades past with the cultural and moral relativism that is practised today. The level of naïveté, fear or downright stupidity attached to broaching the most important issue confronting our future - social cohesiveness - is simply staggering.

The vitriolic abuse and lies directed at those that are prepared to stand up for the national interest and make the case that things are different is nothing short of a disgrace.

None is so offensive as the epithet of racism. It now seems everyone who has an opinion contrary to the left orthodoxy or even believes in upholding the rule of law can be condemned as a racist in an attempt to silence them.

Are you worried about sharia law and hate speech in mosques? Then you are a racist (yes I ask ‘what race’ too!). What about if you are a policeman asking to see the niqab-clad face of an offending driver? Be prepared to be called a racist.

Do you have an opinion on the tent embassy that doesn’t involve praise? You must be a racist. How about flying our national flag? You got it, you’re a racist too.

Even police fining a famous tennis player for road rule transgressions can be subject to accusations that he was a target because they didn’t consider him Australian. I think that’s code for ‘racism’.

In these areas, and many more, the conservative voice of common sense and warning has been proved prophetic. However, the price of being right is that those who are wrong intensify their personal attacks because their policy arguments cannot be credibly sustained.

Unfortunately these voices are given credibility by too much of the mainstream media.

That is the position we now find ourselves in. Speaking up for the truth, based on the experience of previous generations is to become a target of the vituperative left.

Thus the conservative is marginalised, not so much for the beliefs that they share, but for the crime of publicly exposing the hollow and discredited agenda of our new style socialists - and daring to be right.

I believe that will change as more people become aware that they have been misled, deceived and downright lied to by the political left. The only question will be how to redress the damage that has already been done and hope that it won’t be too late.

Time to Stop the People Smugglers

The usual suspects are outraged at the ‘immoral’ determination of Tony Abbott and the Coalition to stop the pernicious trade by people smugglers. Naturally the most vocal critics of the morality of Coalition policy are those whose policies are directly responsible for 14,800 illegal arrivals since 2008 and the deaths of an estimated 600 people.

The most sanctimonious and hypocritical has to be the Greens’ Sarah Hanson-Young whose rhetoric and clamour for the media spotlight have regularly set new lows in party politics.

She has previously accused Qantas of being “Australia's biggest people smuggling effort” for bothering to fly people with valid visas and passports to Australia; while simultaneously scathing of any efforts to stop the pull factors attracting the veritable armada of illegal boats carrying people with no identification to this country.

Yet, when asked to be accountable for her own party’s policies, she refuses to be dragged into “nastiness and politicking”, dismissing questions about the December drowning deaths of at least 95 potential illegal arrivals by simply stating "accidents happen”.

How the mainstream media allow her to get away with the duality of being a contemporary version of Pontius Pilate and Tokyo Rose beggars belief.

Despite the Greens’ manicured propaganda efforts, recent media reports have shed a great deal of light on the plight of the Afghan economic refugee.

In many cases, their plan starts in Kabul with the purchase of a range of fake documents to enable them to ‘have a good story’. These documents include warning letters and death threats from the Taliban, which are promised as keys to a new life in the west.

For the princely sum (even by Australian standards) of $11,500, a one way trip to Australia is then arranged. This begins with a flight to Malaysia, a quick trip across Indonesia's porous borders and ultimately, a leaky boat to Australia.

Incredibly, somewhere along this route any legitimate travel and identification documents are lost, leaving little chance of confirming the identity or history of some of the new arrivals.

The advice to the would-be new Australian colonisers is to “have a good story”.

Of the Australian authorities, the experienced hands strategically advise “they will know you are lying, but as long as you say the same thing whatever they ask you, you will be fine.”

The entire process is disheartening to anyone that believes our welcoming nation and accepting nature are being taken advantage of. It is also an insult to the hard-working men and women who ultimately bear the cost of supporting these wealthy Afghans.

Surveys show that 85 per cent of accepted refugees live on Centrelink benefits for the first five years. They often receive priority services, some of which are not readily available to Australian citizens who are currently doing it tough.

Something has to be done to stop this obscene rort that one can only surmise is endorsed by some of our elected political representatives. Their refusal to re-enact legislation that has previously stopped the boats, stopped the deaths and stopped the abuse of our humanitarian program is an indictment on all of those involved.

Of course, we should maintain our very generous humanitarian refugee intake but in the enduring words of former Prime Minister John Howard, “we will determine who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come”.

To do anything less is to sell out Australia’s national interest.

A Hidden Cost of Health Care

Taxpayers should be concerned at the headline claims by a former head of Medicare’s watchdog body that “Health rorts run rampant, billions lost”.

Alleging that the Medicare system was “riddled with misdirected incentives”, Dr Tony Webber claimed that there is $2 - $3 billion in inappropriate spending every year. This is a significant amount of money which (if true) costs every Australian citizen up to around $150 extra every year.

While Dr Webber has been criticised by the Australian Medical Association (AMA) for implying that the entire profession was no better than rotten apples, there does seem to be a need for a serious examination of what these misdirected incentives and the benignly named ‘benefit leakage’ cost consumers every year. Benefit leakage is the bland description for the rotten practice of fraudulent claims for services that are not supplied.

I first raised benefit leakage in a Senate speech in 2006, identifying that it was possibly costing the private health insurance industry as much as $800 million dollars every year, potentially adding $250 to the cost of every private health insurance policy. At the time, I detailed how one health fund identified $27 million in fraudulent activity in a single year using less than optimum fraud identification technology.

It is very clear that the vast majority of health care service providers and customers do the right thing. However, there is strong evidence that a small number clearly exploit the system to the tune of hundreds of millions (or possibly billions) of dollars every year.

The public doesn’t hear much about these unaligned claims that cost the taxpayers so dearly. More often than not, where false claims are being made, the service provider is simply asked to repay the money. In one case, a medical practitioner was forced to repay $136,000 they billed for services that were never delivered and yet no criminal penalty was applied.

During a recent Senate estimates hearing, I asked the CEO of Medibank Private (Australia’s largest private health insurance provider) how many health providers were disciplined as a result of fraud. Only 14 cases resulted in removal from the electronic payments system while a further 86 matters were resolved through “restitution or a brief provided to police”. I haven’t ascertained how many of these individuals lost their professional accreditation to practice or supply medical services to the public but I would hazard a guess that it was very close to none.

If a financial planner is caught defrauding a client or an accountant captured fiddling the books, the usual result is a professional disqualification and a court appearance. Yet when some of our most trusted professionals and service providers are caught deliberately and blatantly ripping off our universal health care system or taxpayer subsidised private health insurance, a repayment of the misappropriated funds seems to be the remedy of choice to resolve the matter.

With health care costs already comprising a significant part of the government’s annual expenditure and set to increase markedly in the future, surely we need to be more vigorous in identifying the rorters and setting serious penalties.

Boot Camp for Government

The Christmas season typically brings with it a range of excesses that many of us find hard to resist. The celebration of this holy day, followed by slothfully enjoying the Boxing Day Test and then ringing in the New Year typically leaves us feeling worse for wear. The result is usually a few unwelcome additional kilos.

This year I thought I was doing quite well looking after myself until a friend invited me on a ‘fitness walk’ up Adelaide’s highest peak, Mt Lofty.

This 3.8 kilometre trail is a popular trek for runners and walkers of all fitness levels. As a young man and aspiring rower, it was nothing to run to the top and back down as part of our regular training regime. That was the memory seen through my 20-year-old rose coloured glasses when I accepted my friend’s invitation.

Embarking on a crisp and clear morning, the encounters with kangaroos and koalas did little to dampen the pain of using muscles long unaccustomed to the demands now made of them.

It was a painful reminder of the passage of time and the reality of the ‘use it or lose it’ mantra.

What I found so confronting was the fact that I am an active person, with daily walks and a variety of regular callisthenics. I thought I was pretty fit but I was wrong.

Confronted with such gripping evidence of my lack of physical conditioning, I resolved then and there to make 2012 a personal quest to get into better shape.

It meant I needed to enlist the help of some professionals. Rather than join a sterile and boring gym, I enrolled in an army type fitness ‘boot camp’. This is a thrice weekly morning workout with around 60 others of varying athletic ability. It’s run along military lines and inspires teamwork and personal achievement.

Some friends had achieved excellent results through attending with healthy weight loss, gains in strength and higher energy levels. They are a testament to the success of such a rigorous and disciplined program.

Day one was a fitness assessment. It was tough but left the competitive part of me with some very clear goals to achieve in the weeks ahead.

It has always been my belief that we are all goal seeking creatures and that the human spirit is strengthened through having a measurable goal to focus on.

That’s one of the great things about the New Year. It provides a timely excuse to set a challenge for the year ahead. Be it professional, personal or familial, striving to achieve some tangible improvement is fundamental to improving our sense of direction and wellbeing.

For our political leaders the challenge is very similar. Their task is one of inspiring optimism and confidence among the populace in the future of our nation. It means they must implement policies that make sense, sustain scrutiny and effectively achieve their stated outcomes.

It sounds simple enough but somehow the encumbrance of government seems to stifle the process. At least it has with this government.

Despite repeated policy failures, every setback is blamed on external factors or the malfeasance of others. As the trainers at boot camp would say, “it's time for a reality check”.

Losers blame others for their own inadequacies. Bad governments refuse to accept responsibility for their own errors.

It only takes a cursory examination of this government’s track record to demonstrate just how bad they are. The sagas of pink batts, school building rorts, computers in schools and the carbon tax broken promise cannot be forgotten. The continuing problems of Labor’s failed border protection policy, the white elephant National Broadband Network and even higher taxes ahead suggest the New Year has done nothing to dampen that concern.

Of course the best boot camp for whipping a government into shape is an election. That's exactly what our country needs in 2012.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

As the end of the year draws near, there are two important traditions that many of us hold dear. The first is Christmas.

Christmas has a special meaning for Christians as it represents the birth of Jesus Christ, the Son of God who absolved mankind of their sins by giving up His life.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have been told Christmas was actually a pagan festival adopted by the early Christian church. Perhaps it was but that does not detract from what the spirit of Christmas represents.

For some it is a holy day but even for the non-religious, Christmas unites us all around the values of goodwill, hope and happiness. It is a time when believers and non-believers alike endeavour to reconnect with what is truly important for sustaining the human condition here on Earth - faith, friends and family.

Whether that faith is a belief in God or belief in your fellow man, Christmas is a time to give thanks for what you have and reflect on what many others do not.

Naturally some of the usual suspects do their best to remove any Christian tradition attached to Christmas in the name of ‘non-discrimination’ or ‘tolerance’.

Unfortunately, their message is increasingly heeded by the politically correct. The growth of ‘happy holidays’ messages in the media and in personal communication is testament to that. Readers won't be surprised that I am steadfast in my resistance to this secularisation of one of our most important annual celebrations.

The second of our festive institutions is the welcoming of the New Year. Just as Christmas is a time of renewal for the soul, the New Year can be a time to reassess what our personal priorities will be for the year ahead.

While statistics will lament the fact that most New Year’s resolutions will not succeed, reflection of what we’d like to improve in our lives is a step in the right direction.

Whether our new resolve is to improve our health, drop a vice or two, work harder (or smarter) or just to simplify our lives, the process of contemplation is important to ensure we glean as much from our individual potential as we possibly can.

My friends and I usually set an individual challenge to complete for the year ahead. Once I gave up coffee for twelve months, a friend stopped eating fast food whilst others have committed to doing regular volunteer work.

We only ever choose one personal challenge each to focus on and whoever lasts the longest is declared the victor. In some primitive way, it satisfies the competitive instinct amongst my group of friends, coupled with making a positive change in our lives or the lives of others.

Thus far I haven’t picked my challenge for the next year but all reader suggestions are welcome!

One thing I have committed to is having a break with my family. That’s why I’ll be signing off from blogs, emails, videos and media for the next couple of weeks. I trust you will get the same opportunity to spend some time with your loved ones.

In closing, may I thank you all for your contribution to my political life over the past year. Your engagement, encouragement and occasional admonitions make my work infinitely more fulfilling.

I’d also like to wish you and your family a peaceful, safe and joyous Christmas and every blessing for 2012.

The Deceit at Durban

The Green Labor left and the profiteers of climate change catastrophe have been hailing their most recent international junket as an outstanding success.

In reality, the Durban gathering of the carbon dioxide fear mongers was a spectacular failure but that won’t stop the true believers from trying to justify their futile crusade against climate change.

Our own Climate Change Minister Greg Combet said the result was a “massively historic step that has not been achieved before”.

I seem to recall the previous government mouthpiece Senator Penny Wong said a very similar thing after the failed fiasco of the Copenhagen conference – and look what came of that. Nothing, except the scheduling of more conferences to debate the need to have even more conferences to... I am sure you get the picture.

And a gloomy picture it is for Australians who have been lumbered with Labor’s carbon tax.

The ‘success’ of Durban is an agreement to negotiate by 2015 whether to reach an agreement by 2020 about emissions reduction. This is a sure sign that there will be no international action on carbon dioxide emissions under a government led by Julia Gillard.

But that hasn’t stopped her team from signing up to an international ‘Carbon Fund’ run by unelected bureaucrats allocating taxpayers’ money to those it determines are the climate change oppressed. At a time when our government continues to borrow in excess of $100 million every single day, we will now be mortgaging the future of the next generation so we can send billions of dollars to some contrived overseas organisation. Given the track record of rorts and waste in the climate change space, one can hardly be optimistic about how this money will be utilised.

It is another step on the path toward centralising power and funding to the technocrats and away from elected political representatives.

The lack of any international agreement also makes a mockery of the Gillard government’s economic modelling in respect to the impact of the carbon tax on the Australian economy. Gillard’s Treasury figures presuppose that there will be global action on emissions by 2016 that includes countries like the United States. If there was any doubt before, Durban has now confirmed that this is not going to happen.

That means Australian industry will be at a disadvantage to their international competitors. It means that Australian jobs will be at risk. It means that every Australian family will be hit with higher electricity prices and the flow through effects will extend into almost every aspect of their lives. At a time when so many families are already struggling with cost of living pressures, this new impost could break the budget and hearts of many Australians.

Of course, the non-agreement at Durban has come about all too late. We have been warned for a decade or more that we only had five years to act before the planet would become uninhabitable. About now we were told to expect that the few ‘breeding pairs’ of humans left would be living in a barren desolate wasteland practically devoid of water and food unless emissions were cut immediately.

Well, emissions have continued to rise, the few dams we have are full again, the Earth has stopped warming and the deceivers in the AGW alarmist industry are increasingly exposed for what they are. By my count it’s a happy ending to the apocalypse scenario and I think it would make an excellent movie. I even have a title in mind. Perhaps it could be called An Inconvenient Truth. 

Be Careful What You Wish For

Sometimes it pays to be careful what you wish for. All manner of seemingly good ideas turn out to be duds, or even worse, dangerous upon becoming reality.

Who could have imagined the potential perils of overturning the Egyptian dictatorship of Mubarak only to install another oppressive government? 

Well, plenty of people actually but certainly none from the political left who refused to see that the void in leadership could be filled by militant and extreme advocates for Islamic rule. This has been confirmed by the success of the radical Salafist Nour Party and the Muslim Brotherhood in the recent Egyptian elections. The result follows on from the election of other Islamist parties in Tunisia and Morocco.

According to the left apologists, the Muslim Brotherhood is a benign and peaceful organisation that provided resistance to Mubarak’s oppressive regime. The reality is that they were founded in 1928 to restore the Islamic caliphate, a global religious government.

They  pursue their agenda through a number of violent offshoots like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. In the West, organisations like CAIR (Council of American Islamic Relations) are the ‘respectable front’ for the Brotherhood’s agenda.

The Muslim Brotherhood have been linked to the assassinations of Egyptian Prime Minister Nuqrashi in 1948 and President Sadat in 1981; as well as assassination attempts on other political leaders. Now it looks like they will gain political power in Egypt, the implications of which could be very dangerous for many Egyptian citizens, Middle East peace generally and global stability.

Whatever his many failings, Mubarak kept a lid on the political aspirations of the Muslim Brotherhood and their desire to implement sharia law. He also maintained a peace treaty with Israel that survived Sadat’s assassination just two years after the agreement was signed. That peace treaty is now at risk – as are many individual freedoms if the Egyptian State succumbs to sharia law.

The European Court of Human Rights found in 2001 that sharia law was incompatible with democracy and human rights. It violates some of the our most important and cherished values including the equality of people, freedom of speech, freedom of religion and the rule of law applying equally to all.

For those of us that believe in democratic rule, this is clearly the result of a free vote of the Egyptian people. While the final implications of the electoral outcome are as yet unclear, it is difficult to logically accept that the Egyptian citizenry knowingly voted to be governed under sharia when evidence supports the notion that many nations ruled under sharia become democracies in name only. I would even suggest that the entire basis of democratic ideals is that all are equal, a concept not recognised under sharia law.

This means that the millions of Coptic Christians, already persecuted in Egypt, will become even more marginalised, as will tens of millions of others – many Muslims amongst them. It potentially means that the ‘democratic’ elections of the future will be just as devalued as the puppet elections evident in some other nations.

If this circumstance eventuates, rather than a celebration of people power, peace and democratic progress, the ‘Arab Spring’ could actually become the catalyst for even greater oppression. 

A Slippery Surface

It was an extraordinary final parliamentary sitting week for 2011; the greatest shock being the resignation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Harry Jenkins.

Being in the other place, I never served ‘under’ Harry but my observance was that he carried out his duties with good grace, humility and a generous dose of humour.

It was apparent that my colleague Christopher Pyne managed to frustrate the Speaker through his unrelenting point scoring against the Labor Party, but it was equally clear that Speaker Jenkins admired and respected Pyne’s tenacity.

This tenacity was on full display as he nominated a long list of Labor lightweights to replace his retired sparring partner - to no avail. The fix was in and Peter Slipper shrugged off his allegiance to his third political party and became an independent MP as Speaker.

To say we were disappointed in a colleague who had received so much personal support over many years is an understatement. I suspect Labor’s short-term political gain may ultimately be a very painful slip-up.

The fix was also in in the Senate. Labor and the Greens combined their numbers to limit debate on dozens of pieces of legislation. The end result was that twenty Bills were passed into law without any debate whatsoever!

And Labor call this open and transparent government.

The action continued in the Senate with Greens leader Bob Brown being referred to the powerful Senate Privileges Committee in respect to a $1.6 million donation and some Greens’ questions related to the business interests of the donor. There is a lot at stake in the outcome of this investigation, not least of all further exposure of the hypocrisy of many within the Australian Greens.

Unfortunately, the Greens are still running the show with a weak and unprincipled Labor Party, led by a weak and unprincipled Prime Minister who refuses to seriously challenge Bob Brown’s authority.

One of the final acts of this parliamentary year was for the Green-Labor government to cancel the three parliamentary sitting days scheduled for this week. These three days would have enabled the Senate to have a full and frank debate about the myriad of legislation forced through without debate by sheer weight of numbers.

Even though these sitting days had been on the calendar for many months, they clashed with the environmental love-in scheduled for Durban in South Africa. We have now learned that the price of democracy is a first class trip to Africa to boast about imposing new taxes (for no environmental effect) on every Australian family. It’s not just the green hierarchy attending though; two football teams of bureaucrats will also be living it up on the taxpayers’ purse.

To what effect we can only guess. We already have a bigger, broader tax on carbon dioxide than any other country. Our tax is scheduled to be enacted just as a history of climate change deception by leading scientists is exposed through damning leaked emails.

Unfortunately, this year’s final parliamentary sitting week has only reinforced the view that under Labor and the Greens, our country is headed in the wrong direction. 

Preserving a Great Institution

Recently a number of parliamentarians reported back on their electorate-wide consultation about the issue of gay marriage. It was heartening to read that an overwhelming majority (some say as much as two thirds) maintained that their constituents broadly supported preserving traditional marriage.

Of course, when Greens MP Adam Bandt suggested the consultation and report back system, he never thought this would be the outcome. Given the Greens’ advocacy for almost everything that undermines the bedrock institutions of western civilisation, it is a safe bet that he was expecting a response to vindicate his world view.

Unfortunately for Bandt, but fortunately for many of us, the innate wisdom of the electorate has recognised the importance of one of the most enduring institutions of society - traditional marriage.

Marriage has historically been the union of a man and a woman for life with the intention of raising a family. It has proven itself as the most sustainable and effective social support and training environment for our future generations. Within this ideal, children benefit from having both male and female role models.

Of course, despite such a circumstance being the ideal for the nurturing of our children, we cannot ignore the fact that families today come in many different forms. Whatever the construct, we must also acknowledge that where a child is protected and nurtured by a caregiver who loves them unequivocally, they are better off than millions of children around the world.

That said, simply because families take many different forms - with a level of success - doesn’t mean we should stop recognising that what is best for children is living with their mother and father who have a strong, respectful and enduring love for one another.

This has been confirmed by numerous studies tracking the welfare and development of children raised in different domestic circumstances. These studies show that children raised within a traditional marriage are healthier, more confident and better adjusted than those raised in a less balanced environment.

That’s one reason I think we need to preserve marriage as ‘the gold standard’ of relationships and not allow the term to be applied to unions other than those between a man and a woman.

To consider other types of relationships as being marriage would reduce the important recognition that traditional marriage plays in one of the most important building blocks of our society - the family.

There is currently a push to broaden the definition of marriage within our parliament. Once again this demonstrates the salami slicing encroachment by the radicals on our important institutions.

Only two years ago, the progressive left pushed and were successful in granting to all relationships the legal status and benefits accruing to married couples. Despite warnings by some that this was simply another step on the road to undermining the institution of marriage, there were assurances that marriage would forever be preserved as being between a man and a woman.

Perhaps it will, but that will not stop the social engineers from continuing their push to claim yet another of our social and cultural mores in the name of progress.