Reasons not to vote GREEN

[Rorschach]

NATIONAL AFFAIRS: Australian people win on marriage
by Peter Westmore
News Weekly, October 13, 2012

A campaign conducted over a number of years by members of the Greens Party and the homosexual lobby to redefine marriage to include same-sex couples, has been convincingly defeated.

Both houses of federal parliament — and, more recently, the Tasmanian parliament — have rejected moves to redefine marriage.

Since Australia was established as a nation over a century ago, marriage in Australian law has been understood as the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. In 1901, at the time of Federation, this was the common understanding throughout the Western world.

From 2001, when same-sex marriage was legalised in the Netherlands, a number of other countries in Western Europe, as well as Canada and some states in the US, have legalised same-sex marriage.

In response to the push for same-sex marriage overseas, and the fact that Australia recognised marriages performed in other countries, it became necessary for the Australian parliament to consider the issue.

In 2004, Australia’s Marriage Act 1961 was amended to explicitly define marriage as the union of a man and a woman, to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life. The bill also declared that same-sex unions contracted overseas would not be recognised as marriages in Australia.

It was supported unanimously by both the then Coalition Government, led by John Howard, and the Labor opposition. Since then, however, the Australian Democrats and the Greens — the latter now having nine members of the Senate — have campaigned to amend the Marriage Act to include same-sex couples.

Before the 2010 election, the Greens indicated that they would introduce legislation on the first day of the next parliament, to permit same-sex marriage. Subsequently, bills to legalise same-sex unions were introduced in the Senate by Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, and in the House of Representatives by the newly-elected Greens MP, Adam Bandt.

To build momentum for change, Mr Bandt moved a motion in federal parliament that MPs should consult their constituents on the matter and report back to parliament. The motion was carried with support from the Labor government, independents and some Coalition MPs.

Bandt declared that same-sex marriage was “inevitable”. However, when MPs reported back to parliament, a majority reported that most of their constituents opposed any change to the law on marriage.

A campaign was then organised by homosexual organisations and the GetUp! lobby group to change ALP policy on the issue. In most states, resolutions were carried at state conferences of the party, supporting same-sex marriage.

The ALP’s 2011 national conference voted overwhelmingly to support changes to the Marriage Act to permit same-sex marriage, with enthusiastic support from most of the media, including the ABC. As a face-saver to parliamentarians who opposed the legislation, Labor MPs were allowed a conscience vote.

The Coalition parties, led by Tony Abbott, resolved to oppose the bills, as the Coalition parties had gone to the last election supporting the existing law, and because the last Coalition government had taken a party position on marriage in 2004.

Last February, two bills to amend the Marriage Act were introduced in the House of Representatives, one moved by Labor MP Steven Jones, and the other by Adam Bandt and Tasmanian Independent, Andrew Wilkie.

While the bills were similar, the Jones bill was more limited in its wording. It proposed simply to remove the reference to man and woman. The Bandt-Wilkie bill proposed that marriage should be defined as “the union of two people, regardless of their sex, sexual orientation or gender identity”.

Parliamentary inquiries were held into the bills, and it was recommended that a single bill be put to each house of parliament.

The Australian Family Association’s Mrs Mieke deVries (right) handing to the President of the Tasmanian Legislative Council, the Hon. Mrs Sue Smith MLC (left), the AFA “Save Marriage in Tasmania” petition, signed by over 4,200 individuals. In the centre is the Hon. Mr Paul Harris MLC, Deputy President of the Legislative Council.

Debate on the bills commenced in parliament last June, but only came to a vote in September, after members of the House of Representatives and the Senate had the opportunity to debate the legislation. Hundreds of thousands of Australians participated in the process, contacting their MPs and senators to express their views.

The final vote was an astonishing defeat for the legislation in both houses of parliament. In the House of Representatives, the vote was 98 to 42. All Coalition MPs present voted against the bill, and 40 per cent of Labor MPs, including both the Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her predecessor Kevin Rudd, crossed the floor to vote against it.

In the Senate, the bill was defeated by 41 to 26, with all nine Greens senators voting in favour of the bill.

Attention has now shifted to the states, where bills have been introduced for state-based same-sex marriage legislation.

In Tasmania, the Labor-Greens same-sex marriage legislation was carried in the lower house, but was defeated 8:6 in the state’s upper house, after thousands of Tasmanians joined the campaign against it.

The decisive parliamentary votes, taken despite a media-blitz, has blunted the push to redefine marriage — for the time being.

[Neferti]

Did you hear that Penny Wong is now a FATHER?

[Aussie]

Did you hear that Penny Wong is now a FATHER?

.....and that is a reason not to vote Greens because.................

[Neferti]

Did you hear that Penny Wong is now a FATHER?

.....and that is a reason not to vote Greens because.................

I was just following your lead, Oswald .... tentative "left turn" to distract those interested in the subject matter. I did good, right?

[Rorschach]

Why? Radical social engineering... no thanks. i agree with the majority.

[Rorschach]

Today in the Tele...

Are The Greens a spent political force?

* Yes 93.07% (2845 votes)
* No 6.93% (212 votes

[Rorschach]

CANBERRA OBSERVED: Behind the collapse in the Greens' vote
by national correspondent
News Weekly, November 24, 2012

The recent election result in the Australian Capital Territory was further confirmation of a gradual decline in support for the Greens from what could well have been the party’s high water-mark at the last federal election.

It would be rash to interpret that spate of poor recent results as presaging the beginning of the end of the third force in Australian politics, but the Green juggernaut is clearly slowing down.

Since the last election, the Greens have gone backwards in state elections and many local council elections. The slide has probably accelerated since the retirement from the Senate of the party’s charismatic leader and founder, Dr Bob Brown, in July.

In the 17-member Legislative Assembly of the ACT, the Greens dropped from four members to just one, with the Labor and Liberal parties winning eight members each.

It was a woeful result for the Greens in what is arguably Australia’s most left-leaning and socially liberal city.

Of course, it was no surprise when the solitary successful Greens candidate, Shane Rattenbury, threw his support behind the incumbent Labor Party in the tied chamber, despite the Liberals winning a majority of first-preference votes.

The Greens MP also demanded and received a ministry while insisting on up to 100 other conditions for his ongoing support of Labor, including a new 90 per cent renewable energy target.

The ACT Greens blamed a Liberal Party’s scare campaign on soaring council “rates” for its poor showing, while claiming to have let itself down by not campaigning hard enough in the last week of the election.

In fact, the ACT result is more likely attributable to the electorate’s rejection of a raft of social policies over the previous term that had begun to set off alarm-bells among voters.

While Canberra is a public service town, and therefore a Labor stronghold federally, the cultural views of its citizens are not too dissimilar from their counterparts in other parts of the country.

Under the ACT Labor-Greens alliance there have been a string of law changes from the banning of fireworks to the banning of plastic bags in supermarkets (Canberra shoppers must buy plastic bags, resulting in a higher cost for consumers but largely the same number of plastic bags being produced).

The Greens and Labor are pushing to allow prisoners in the ACT’s new jail to be given syringes in order to shoot up drugs “safely” while incarcerated, despite the very strong objections of prison guards.

And then there are the Greens’ most important policies — its ongoing campaigns to legalise euthanasia and enact the same-sex marriage agenda in the ACT.

While Canberra voters might agree with some of these proposals individually, taken as a whole they encapsulate the relentless Greens agenda, with more to come.

The attraction of the single-chamber ACT parliament, so far as the Greens are concerned, is that it can serve as a social laboratory for the rest of the country.

Over the last decade, the Greens’ vote nationally has climbed from just under 5 per cent at the 2001 election to a peak of just under 12 per cent at the 2010 election, according to Australian Electoral Commission lower house results.

But voters are also starting to see what it is actually like with the Greens in power, particularly after the Gillard federal government’s Labor-Greens experiment, and it would be a surprise to see the Greens’ vote exceeded this time around.

Tasmania struggles as a virtual welfare state because any serious proposals for development run into trenchant opposition from the Greens.

The difficulty of dealing with the Greens, as the Labor Party is starting to realise, is that there is no way of satisfying their policy agenda.

Appeasement does not work. Granting a concession means only moving the goal-posts for the next battle.

At the federal level, there is likely to be a backlash against the Greens at the coming election, and, in the absence of the plausible presentation of Bob Brown to win over the media, there are growing public concerns about the party’s deeper radical agenda.

Labor also knows it has to stand up to the Greens to stop a party to its left devouring its own membership.

For its own survival, Labor has to take on the Greens as a political force.

Meanwhile, there remains a strong and fervent Greens supporter base, nurtured by many teachers in schools and universities, that is likely to keep the Greens momentum going for some time regardless of any collateral damage its MPs inflict on the country.

[Rorschach]

[Rorschach]

They support criminals.

[IQS.RLOW]

They support terrorists