Avoiding Responsibility

So I woke up Sunday morning, bleery eyed and thirsty. I sat down to read the news as I always do, loaded up the Australian ABC news website, and rather than reading more about the selling out of Australian families by the 'Families First' Party, I read about race riots in Sydney's middle-class south eastern districts.

What a week! First we have the Family First Senator Steve Fielding flexing his parliamentary muscles for the first time, and passing the Voluntary Student Unionism Bill, better known as the False Economy for Families Bill. Senator Fielding claims that he voted for the Bill on its merits, a claim which I find a bit dubious. The merits of this Bill are that it will shut down the National Union of Students, a lobbying arm of the Labour Party. Senator Fielding will also argue that it saves students, and their families, anything up to $200 a year in what were previously compulsary student union fees. Unfortunately, that isn't going to be the case. Because for families who struggle to send their children to university a lot of the time send them to universities in regional areas due to the lower upfront costs of accommodation and living expenses. But most of these towns survive on the extra services that the student unions provided in these towns. For example, the Union of my Alma Mata, the University of New England in Armdiale, owned and operated the only cinema in the town. The Students Association also provided a health clinic, and dental surgery, freeing up spaces for locals in the limited number of practices in the town. Those students will now be joining the queues at major hospitals, and private dentists will see a rise in the number of poor student patients, and tooth decay will begin to rise again. Saving $200? Not likely!! Good job Senator Fielding for carefully thinking through these issues, you have struck a great deal for Australian Families. You f**king imbecile! (see here)

This all happened on Thursday, and was still making headlines into the weekend, as talks of a deal between the Howard Government and Family First on the RU-486 Abortion Pill issue gathered steam. But thankfully for the Government and Family First, this issue was buried in the back pages by the bunch of f**king idiots who decided to smear the already tarnished name of Australia by going on a rampage on Cronulla beach. It wasn't enough for people around the world to think that we are a bunch of racist red necks, these people just had to go and prove it.

What's worse is that the real culprits for this will not go unpunished, rather they are allowed to take the moral high ground (see here). For the last 3 years, the Howard Government has been fanning the flames of racism in Australia to justify its foreign policy of sycophantical applause for all things George W. Bush. Now that racism has exploded in their faces, and they are trying to run and hide from the consequences for their actions. Shame on you John Howard and your Government. Your policies have driven a wedge between the people of Australia, and what you have done in 3 years will take 30 to mend. Thank you, because by that time you will be dead, and we will still be dealing with the ramifications.