Piers Akerman: We might as well have reality stars ruling this country
IF FADS and fashions are going to dictate Australian public policy, parliament might just as well descend into the depths of reality TV with the stars of MKR running the country.
Opinion
Don't miss out on the headlines from Opinion. Followed categories will be added to My News.
PRIME Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s media cheer squad would like you to believe that the leaked transcripts of his first conversation with US President Donald Trump portray him as a tough leader.
In fact, they reveal how he deceived the Australian public over the nature of the refugee deal he cut with Trump’s predecessor, President Obama.
For, despite spending months denying that the agreement was in fact a form of people swap, that’s exactly what Turnbull outlined in his discussion with the US leader — much to his very obvious astonishment.
But what the transcript also makes clear is, despite telling Australians that many of the people smugglers’ clients being held on Manus Island and in Nauru would have the chance to go to America, if they passed the vetting process, the US was actually in no way bound to take a single person.
As Turnbull stressed to Trump “the agreement, which the Vice President (Mike Pence) just called the Foreign Minister (Julie Bishop) about less than 24 hours ago and said your Administration would be continuing, does not require you to take 2,000 people. It does not require you to take any.
“The obligation is for the United States to look and examine and take up to and only if they so choose — 1,50 to 2000. Every individual is subject to your vetting. You can decide to take them or to not take them after vetting. You can decide to take 1,000 or 100. It is entirely up to you.
“The obligation is to only go through the process”.
It certainly couldn’t be any clearer than that.
And, predictably, when the leaked transcript was circulated last week there was rioting on Manus Island, and the usual gaggle of so-called refugee advocates were given airtime on the taxpayer-funded ABC to demand that all those who were being held because they had attempted to arrive in Australia illegally should be immediately released from detention and brought to Australia to be given full access to the suite of benefits Australian taxpayers currently bankroll.
Just as unsurprisingly, Turnbull now has his back against the wall fighting dissidents in his own party when he should be concentrating his fire power on the runaway Opposition leader Bill Shorten and his plans to kill what remains of the Australian economy while introducing a smothering blanket of nanny state law that would make the beleaguered Swedes blush with envy.
As Parliament resumes next week after the long winter break, an issue which few Australians rate as important or urgent or compelling, is preoccupying the fake news Left-wing media.
That issue is of course the question of whether millennia of tradition and culture should be abandoned so a tiny minority of Australians can indulge the current fad among Western nations for homosexual marriage.
And fad it is, make no mistake. Just over 12 years ago, Labor backed then Prime Minister John Howard when he clarified federal legislation to define marriage as union between a man and a woman.
Seven years ago, Julia Gillard pledged the Labor Party would not support sponsorship of homosexual marriage legislation. Six years ago, Labor’s annual conference voted to permit a conscience vote on the issue and when a homosexual marriage bill was presented just five years ago, in 2012, it was defeated with senior Labor members including Gillard, Tony Burke, Ed Husic and Joel Fitzgibbon voting against it.
Now the fashion is for change. However Opposition leader Shorten, who has long been a supporter of homosexual marriage, as has Turnbull, is opposed to the Liberal policy of asking the Australian public what it thinks through a plebiscite before resubmitting legislation to parliament.
Shorten and the Greens claim that the possibility of a plebiscite would unleash a wave of public vilification which would threaten the mental health of the alphabetical identity-challenged LGBTQXYZ crowd (a new letter seems to be added each week).
RELATED VIDEO
So, out of concern for a small percentage of the mental health of the fewer than three per cent of the Australian population revealed to consider themselves homosexuals or something other than heterosexual in the most recent census, 97 per cent of Australians have had to have the far more pressing concerns of the economy, the real and constant threat to energy, the failure of the universities and education system generally, put aside while this mosquito fart of an idea brings the public policy debate to a standstill.
On Friday, the Kenyan-born Senator Lucy Gichuhi sent out a lengthy statement on her views on homosexual marriage. It was a clearly enunciated opinion in which she asked for a respectful debate while supporting the dignity of the traditional marriage and family unit.
Notwithstanding her plea for respect, her views were sneered at by the media in the same bullying tones that those who favour homosexual marriage have used toward their critics throughout this debate.
At the moment, homosexual couples are treated as are all others in de facto relationships with the rights and obligations which pertain to traditional marriage — but they want the word “marriage”.
If fads and fashions are going to dictate Australian public policy to the exclusion of all other meaningful issues, parliament might just as well descend into the depths of reality television with the stars of My Kitchen Rules running the country.
Black Friday ahead for retailers
Let’s call this rail dispute for what it is. It’s industrial warfare that is a dagger to the heart of our city and its still struggling economy, writes Paul Nicolaou.
Transport minister Jo Haylen’s service could be terminated by train stoppage
Sydney’s train strike has not come as any surprise. The transport minister had weeks to plan for this but instead basked in the glory of a Metro she did nothing to build, writes James O’Doherty.