The NON Family Courts



The toon above was first published to accompany an article in last weeks Spectator by John Hirst, The article is quite a timely and poignant piece considering current and recent events. Please remember to pick up your copy of The SPECTATOR Australia magazine, out every Friday.

The article concerns a quite disgraceful but little-heeded policy change so is reproduced below:

The Federal Labor government appears bent on making it easier for mothers in Family Court proceedings to make false accusations about fathers being violent and abusing their children.

Making such accusations are a routine part of custody battles. The Howard government made some effort to deter them; these sanctions are to be lifted in an amending Bill now before the parliament.

The declared aim of the amendments is to protect children better from abuse and violence. The Bill reaffirms that the best interests of the child must be the paramount consideration in the arrangements that follow separation of their parents. That always sounds reassuring. It is the mantra under which the Family Court operates. But when one principle, however worthy, is made pre-eminent, to be pursued whatever the consequences, terrible harm may be done.

Consider. A mother makes a false accusation of abuse against a father; she may believe it to be true or it may be concocted. Either way the father is immediately made into a pariah. After the case is examined, the Court may decide that the father cannot see his children, not because it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that he has abused his children, not because on the balance of probabilities he has abused his children, but because in the mind of a judge he presents an unacceptable risk to his children. Well, you might think, with children you can’t be too careful. But consider what this carefulness is doing. Innocent fathers are branded as child abusers by an instrument of the state, a body going under the name of a court of law, which then rules that they are not to see their children again. Just how many fathers will you torture in this way to protect one child?

The Family Court was pushed into operating on ‘unacceptable risk’ by the High Court in the case M v M. The consequence is that the Court seeks absolute security for the children in its purview. Meanwhile in the administration of child welfare by the states great risks are run because the policy here is to keep children in the care of parents if at all possible. I think too many risks are run. Children are reported as being at risk, social workers examine the case, they give advice and warnings to the parents, and leave the children in their care. All too frequently the parents do not improve; they remain alcoholics or drug addicts and their children die from abuse or neglect. In New South Wales in the years 2008-2009, 57 children died from abuse or neglect. Of these 30 were known to be at risk by Community Services, which had left them with their parents.

Everyone wants the child welfare system to be better. But no-one says that no risks should be taken. If the Family Law practice were followed in child protection, on the first report of abuse, children would be removed from their parents. One reason why children are not more readily removed is that the cost of maintaining them then falls on the government through payments to foster parents or the support of institutions which care for them. These considerations do not operate in Family Law cases. If the Court rules that a father can no longer see his children, he is still required by the Child Support Agency to make payments to support them.

The Family Court should not deny a parent access to a child unless they can be shown to be a danger to the child. The ‘unacceptable risk’ policy should be over-ruled and so free the Court from perpetrating gross injustices. Fathers are citizens who should not be deprived of their children without a case being proved against them. But even on the test of the best interests of the child, consider what damage the Court is doing to the children of the innocent fathers: they are deprived of a father and later they will find out that this was because of the falsehood of their mother.

The amendments made to the Family Law Act by the Howard government did not go as far as I am proposing here. They aimed to reduce the evil by providing that a parent knowingly making false accusations would have to bear the costs of the other party and a parent who made false accusations could be declared to be an ‘unfriendly parent’ in the matter of determining custody, where the aim is to keep both parents in a relationship with their children. Both these provisions are now to be removed because it is claimed they inhibit women from revealing violence.

The government’s rationale for the change about costs reads:

‘Vulnerable parents may choose to not raise legitimate safety concerns for themselves and their children due to a fear they will be subject to a costs order if they cannot substantiate the claims.’

So in this court allegations without evidence are to be encouraged!

Under the proposed amendments, the Court is also to abandon proceeding by evidence in determining whether family violence has occurred between the mother and father. If one party declares that the behaviour of the other caused them to be fearful, then violence has occurred.

The government’s Bill has been examined by a committee of the Senate. Its Coalition members have recommended that the changes discussed here be not made. But the Greens are happy with them so unless the government has a change of heart, they will pass into law.

Whatever the intent of its promoters, one sure effect of the Bill is that more false allegations will be made and with greater chance of success. More children will be needlessly deprived of contact with their fathers.

Growing Old Disgracefully



If like me, you are a political tragic and are addicted to the weekly Monday night ABC Colosseum like show, Q and A, where Conservatives are thrown to the Leftist Lions in what is nothing more than a bloodsport, applauded by the majority left audience (do not believe the opening audience stats) AND If you are like me and you are of the more conservative mindset, then you probably felt like you had just walked into a sleazy bar and there you saw your favourite school teacher stripping to "You can leave your hat on"!!!

You see, Noni Hazlehurst, Australian actor (I loved her in her role as Nancy Wake in the 1987 film, The White Mouse) and probably best remembered as the lovable, caring presenter of the long running children's TV show, Play School, from 1978 to 2001, was rightfully lauded and questioned for her role in a less than ethical book reading satirical piece called "Go the f@#K to sleep". If you don't know what I am talking about then just watch this.

To think that she unshamadly did this, the same woman that we entrusted to entertain, inform and let's face it, babysit our kids for many years, is in my opinion and slap in face and a betrayal of trust. When asked about her role in this controversial piece, she basically deferred the whole thing as harmless fun that actually helps adults deal with the drama of getting small children to sleep and then she defaulted to the fact that the real lowering of standards are all about us, on billboards and bus shelter everywhere. I agree that the way women in particular are betrayed in such advertising is sending the wrong messages but what kind of message does this attempt at humour send?

When my former wife and I had our first child, we sought ans received advice on the issue of getting the baby to sleep from family, friends, books on the subject and even the Tresillion Nurses Organisation BUT if someone had handed us this book, then I would have handed it back with the comment "How the hell does a book about swearing at and even threatening a child who won't go to sleep help us at this time of need?"

What is it with the left and their brand of humour? They get greatly offended when Alan Jones calls PM Julia Gillard, JULIAR and say that people on the right are disrespecting the office of the Prime Minister by referring to her as just Julia or Gillard and then go on to say that it's only because she is a woman that she is being disrespected and yet they hypocritically have no issue with referring to former PM, John Howard, as "Little Lying Johnny" or leftist cartoonists drawing the foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, in a pair of fish net stocking and comedians constantly ridiculing the current Federal opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, about the fact that he wears speedos because he just happens to want to swim or run on the beach in them. For heaven's sakes, they are politicians and are open to such lampooning but just don't critique our politicians, that right Noni!?!

Seems to me that the hypocrisy of the left has no bounds and there is no measure or line of decency when it does come to satire. This book and the reading of it by Noni Hazlehurst, actually did offend me and as a father and hopefully grandfather, I see this as nothing more than either a desperate act by a left over, left out lefty such as Hazlehurst (probably pissed off because they used Michael I'll sell my soul for money" Caton and Cate Blank-Cheque, instead of her to push the Carbon Tax scam) or just another wink and nod at the anti family movement that we know these Marxist loving "Useful Idiots" so openly mock at their Northern Beaches Cocktail parties!

Sorry Noni, but you are growing old disgracefully and I am sure Big Ted is not impressed either.... in my opinion

Stealing Our Super

Your superannuation might not be as safe as you think. Desperate governments could "raid" it.



Story here

Where's the outrage?



Where's the outrage? The left-wing critics who fretted and wailed over Howard's policies have lost their voice

TIM BLAIR:

It ought be nearly impossible to move through the streets of any Australian capital at the moment, what with them all jammed to the shopfronts by furious leftist protesters. Anyone in charge of a large-scale papier mache operation – no leftist protest is complete without a big giant puppet head – might expect to be running triple shifts.

After all, we’re presently overrun with the sort of issues that previously drove the left into a frenzy of indignant street chanting. The federal government has just signed a deal to send asylum seekers to Malaysia, a nation that is not a signatory to the United Nations’ refugee convention. The government’s planet-rescuing carbon tax excludes agriculture and petrol, which renders it a token measure capable only of damaging the local economy while doing nothing about alleged global warming. The government is cosying up to Big Coal, promising that this demonized industry has a viable future.

And, by the way, we still have troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Labor Prime Minister is such a fan of the US that she almost cries just talking about it. Yet the protests that were so much a part of John Howard’s reign as Prime Minister are barely visible under the reign of Julia Gillard (who, despite being the second individual to sack a Labor Prime Minister since Sir John Kerr ousted Gough Whitlam in 1975, never suffered even a fraction of Kerr’s vilification).

It’s almost as though those street-stomping activists of the Howard era were more motivated by a loathing of the former Liberal PM than they were over any matters of principle. Consider, for only a second, how the bearded-and-shouty wing of Australia’s left would have responded if it had been former Liberal immigration minister Philip Ruddock instead of Labor’s Chris Bowen announcing a human being swap with Malaysia.

Just a guess, but it might have seen a larger number than the 200 or so holdouts who staged a mini-protest in Sydney last weekend. “We're here to say no to the Malaysia solution," longtime refugee
advocate Ian Rintoul said to basically nobody. He was slightly more aggressive during the Howard years. In 2004, Rintoul – preparing for a Kirribilli House vigil – made this vow: “We plan to lock up Howard this Easter unless he frees the innocent asylum seekers that languish in his political prisons."

There are more “innocent asylum seekers” than ever presently languishing in Gillard’s “political prisons”, but to this point the current Prime Minister remains at liberty. Don’t let down your guard, Ms Gillard. Rintoul’s Easter bunny justice brigade is merely biding its time, presumably waiting for the right moment to pounce.

To its shame, the previous Liberal-led government made all the correct soothing noises about addressing climate change, particularly as it became electorally vulnerable. None on the left were buying it, however, and probably for good reason. They might have assumed that a conservative carbon pricing policy would cynically let major carbon emitters off the hook.

Which is almost precisely what Julia Gillard’s carbon tax will do, seeing agriculture and petrol aren’t included. The former gets a free pass because the government claims it simply can’t work out a way to accurately gauge agricultural carbon dioxide emissions. (Puzzlingly, the same government is endlessly trusting of emissions figures supplied by the dodgy likes of China. Perhaps Labor should invite Beijing’s best bovine carbon calculators out to Australia for a conclusive cow count.)

Petrol is cut from carbon tax considerations because the government prefers to keep its approval ratings above single figures. There’s no other possible explanation. Besides being a Mr Big of carbon output, petrol consumption is accurately measured every day by millions of individuals at petrol pumps. The whole deal is primed, as it were, for a carbon tax.

Again, ponder the likely response of local sandal-and-Crikey enthusiasts if the previous Coalition government had proposed such a scheme. The oil company conspiracy theories would be screaming across the internet like so many YouTube cat videos, and workers at Shell and BP headquarters would have to gain access to their blockaded offices via teleporting.

But thus far the only significant protests – at least numerically – from the left regarding the carbon tax are in favour of it, petrol exclusion and all. These smotheringly pious gatherings are led by GetUp!, an unexpectedly elderly activist group whose members, according to GetUp! leader Simon Sheikh, have an average age of 55. When the more senior members GetUp, it’s usually with the electronic assistance of a Smokey Dawson chair.

So they’ll protest for a carbon tax – when you think about it, it’s more an affirmation than a protest – but GetUp! bravely decided to StandDown! over the Malaysian solution. Sheikh’s explanation for this in June was interesting. Essentially, he didn’t want GetUp! to inadvertently promote the Malaysian plan by looking like a bunch of idiots who opposed it. “The government would love to see groups like us marching against this plan because that's their strategy,” he told The Australian. “They would think it would shore them up as the conservative force they would hope to be on this issue.”

Like most other Howard-era agitators, then, GetUp! is now an inactivist movement. Staying at home and doing nothing is an official tactic, which doesn’t exactly bode well for the financial future of these groups; why pay for membership (if, indeed, membership requires payment) when the big protest march of the day is from your front door to the letterbox to see if the latest issue of Caravan & Motorhome has arrived?

Still, leftist rage must always find a target. If it isn’t the treatment of claimed refugees or a carbon tax that absolves Big Oil, it’ll be something more convenient and less likely to offend the untouchable Gillard government. A few weeks ago, 18 demonstrators were arrested in Melbourne following a protest against the Max Brenner store chain. The previous month, two demonstrators were charged after a raucous protest outside a Max Brenner shop in Sydney.

The Brenner chain sells chocolate. It happens to be owned by an Israeli company, hence the outrage. That’s where the heat is protest-wise in 2011. The left is angry about Jewish sweets.

Sunday, Carbon Sunday

PM Gillard announces the details of her proposed "carbon" tax



Well that's it, it's happened, Julia and Co. have finally done it..... they have made me speechless. My jaw is still on the ground and I am virtually in a state of shock. To think that this once great country and democracy of ours has elected a government that is quite willing to destroy its own industries, including mining, and lower the standards of living for its people for generations to come, all based on a scientifically unproven theory! Well it has simply sucked the air out of this room and left me speechless. As I watched and listened to the PM along with the gaggle the sycophantic followers in the media and those traitorous "Independents", I thought to myself "This must have been what it was like when Stalin or Hitler made their speeches to the masses!"

Sure, the ALP and the Greens will be removed at the next election and if Abbott is true to his word, then maybe he will be able to unscramble this poisonous egg and put it in the rubbish bin of history, where it belongs..... assuming he has the numbers of course. Until then we will all have to take a big bite of this bullsh*t sandwich called a carbon tax and put up with these strutting pious peacocks of the left.

The real warning here is that the ALP and the Greens, for different reasons, are playing the long game. They know that this will cause their defeat at the next Federal Poll but as long as the mining industry (the major financial supporter of the Coalition Party) is decimated and that they all get their United Nations kudos, then I guess that the damage to our way of life and the economy is to them just collateral damage.

THE FREEDOM TO DO WHAT WE SAY



Here we go again, more proof that this country is slipping into a Big Government, high taxing, big spending socialist nightmare. The Carbon tax is coming and it is probably the most unpopular policy any Australian Government has ever forced on it's people. Not even Whitlam was as bad as this mob and this PM, now that is saying something.

As dangerous as this Government is to the economy there is one aligned organisation that wishes it had that much power. Yes, the Karl Marx wannabes over at GET UP are threatening hundreds of major employers around Australia with a business destroying boycott of their goods and services by their half a million faithful activist members, if these companies support or join an anti carbon tax campaign!

Well golly gosh, I am shaking in my boots and I am sure that the CEO's and Managers of these great Aussie employers are just falling about in fear!

Seriously, who is GETUP anyway. A fringe group of Socialists and Marxists and tree huggers that get far too much media exposure and are really known only for their support of everything anti WEST, along with their usual media stunts, like this one.

Put it this way. to become a member of GETUP all you need to do is go to their website and fill in the member form and that's it.

Wow, such dedication does a member need to join this great freedom group of the people. No fees, no qualifications, no endorsements , nothing just an email address and a name (any name!) and you are a member of the activist army. ............

Well not quite. I signed up just to get what I wanted and that was a stream of rubbish emails and propaganda but occasionally the good info would stream through and this information has helped me with my work. You see folks, to beat your enemy, you must know them well. I will tell you this about GETUP, they are a bunch of toothless tigers who believe in free speech ONLY for those who agree with their leftist ideology and worldview.

Great, I am glad such group exists because that means that our democracy and liberty is working and that these extremists do not need to resort to terrorism just to make a point.......

What a shame they don't feel the same way because clearly Mafia style tactics and blackmail is what they use to try and get their agenda sorted. To want to destroy a business because it doesn't want a government policy imposed upon it that will force it out of business, competition and or sack employees, speaks clearly as to just what GETUP means and it means ANTI AUSTRALIA!!!

Worrying about the wrong anniversary‏



What is all the hoo-haa about? Julia Gillard would consider the day she took over leadership of the country and by default became Australia's first female PM as a GOOD DAY to remember. The MSM is getting just a little bit too excited about this date.

The date that should be the one that Julia Gillard truly regrets is the day that she lost her leadership, that day was the 21st of August, 2010, the Federal Election. True it took a bit more time to get to the final numbers but it was certainly the day that she made a deal with the devil and sold her soul and her leadership to the Greens Party and a handful of self deluded Independents.

Gillard, is in my opinion, reflecting in the Polls just what she actually projects and that is simply "DEPRESSION". The woman is in an arranged marriage and this loveless union has born no fruit that is worth eating. The bitter taste in Julia's mouth everyday is that she has to go back on a primary election promise to satisfy those that gave her preferences thus enabling her and her party to take power. A huge cost and in the end very little power at all.

Whether or not you favour the usual ideology of the Australian Labor Party (Socialism) is beside the point. All previous ALP PMs had agendas and followed their own reforms and ideology to make their mark in Australian political history. This poor woman cannot do that because she is being forced to follow the ideologies of the far left Greens and the pampering of some former conservative Independents. When you think of her as a woman who struggled through the "glass ceiling" and did her time in the back rooms to finally obtain the top prize in Australian politics, only to be told that you do not really own your own title and we will blackmail you out of favour with the punters if you do not do as we say, then you can actually feel very sad for her ................ well you can if you want!