Never mind Amanda Vanstone's spirited Machiavellian-cum-Orwellian attack on poor old Kim for bringing the Howard Government to task for importing cheaply paid foreign workers instead of funding Australia's skills shortage. Too clever by half, Amanda the Hun does us the favour of outlining Howard's ten-year devotion to racist xenophobia as she tries to assign these larval policies to Beazley.
But that is not why Beazley must go. This is:
"Why not include on visa forms a statement that you will uphold Australian values and laws. Why not when you come to this country have at least some sessions on Australian values, the right treatment of women, the right treatment of each other and respect for each other's position in a democracy." -- Kim Beazley, leader of the opposition Labor Party of Australia.
Of course, Kim is just trying to one-up John Howard, who mouths phoney family values all the time, but by attempting to claim universal values as distinctly Australian, Beazley has succumbed to the Australia-centric narcissism currently sweeping the country and made a terminal fool of himself. He needs to be caned off stage.
As a letter writer to The Age says:
Just because "equal opportunity for all" is renamed "fair go" doesn't make it exclusively Australian.
At the moment the dinky-di "Aussie values" being trumpeted ad nauseam by a government gone mad consist entirely of encouraging racism, calling global warming a fiction, detaining asylum seekers behind razor wire, lying about children overboard, lying about WMD's, lying about Saddam Hussein's connection to Al-Qaeda, lying about knowledge of the AWB kickbacks to Hussein, denying workers their rights, forcing students to pay impossibly high fees for an education the politicians all got for nothing, and so much, much more of so much, much less.
Australia is in desperate need of a change of government. But not with Beazley as leader.
-- Theodore G. Willikers
