♪ uncomplicated loving.
Anyone who thinks that Australia is much the same country as it was a month ago really needs to start reading newspapers.
In the final 30 days of the Parliamentary year, John Howard has used his majority in the Senate to push through a horde of bills that change in very fundamental ways how law in Australia works.
For anyone who hasn't been following the play-by-play
* You are no longer innocent until proven guilty if the police decide to charge you as a terror suspect.
* You can be held for up to 14 days in a prison cell without being even charged of a crime if the police think its in their best interest.
* Freedom of speech was a thing of the past. You can now be jailed for seditious writing or criticising Our Glorious Leader's country.
* Our welfare system will now just stop paying pensions to 100,000 disadvantaged Australians and single parents. Instead we're going to start using the American Welfare to Work model.
* All that I.R. reform that people were talking about? Passed unoquivically. You can be denied a job for not negotiating a private contract with your employer, fired for not providing a medical certificate to your employer after a sick day, or refusing to work a shift you can't make. Of course if you work for a company with less than 100 employees it's different. Your boss no longer needs to provide a reason for firing you. Hell, he can fire you for not responding to his sexual advances.
* Like America, convicted felons can no longer vote in this country. Or any young person who isn't enrolled the day after an election is called. Or any recent immigrant who doesnt' front up to the ballot with full photo ID. The poor, the young and the aspirational migrant are now going to find it very hard to vote (and they all traditionally vote labour). On the flip side after years of succesfully avoiding huge expensive acidic multi-million dollar electoral campaigns, the Senate have finaly passed a bill allowing soft money contributions to be made anonymously. Rich Australians and companies will find it easier to support the liberal party than ever before.
* Nuclear waste can now be processed in the Australian territories, regardless of the desires of the state or premiers.
* Telstra is now fully privatised. What Howard began on the condition that he would only sell a minority share in the company so as to keep Australians in control of their own phone lines ended this year as Howard said keeping the main share was uneconomic and a bad idea anyway. His pet senate ushered the bill in.
* Voluntary Student Unionism is in. It will come into complete effect come July 1 2006. Compulsary Student Unions are now criminalised with steep fines placed on any university that dares to try to charge so much as an amenities fee. It was rushed through the senate in under 2 hours of debate after Steve Fielding of Family First sold his vote to the government. Of course noone knows what John Howard offered him in his private thursday morning meeting with the senator but seeing as Fielding's drafting a private members bill to illegalise abortion drugs in this country I'm sure we'll get something in exchange for the loss of campus life on universities around Australia.
The Greens, the ALP, the democrats and even Barnaby Joyce can't muster enough votes to stop any bill that the Howard government brings up and the Howard government is using this to change Australia in ways nobody realised they would last election. There's no point them even turning up to work - debates are being stifled and John Howard is just getting whatever he wants passed.
This is what a mandate means. This is what happens when you give control of both houses to one party. And they have two more years to keep doing it.
In the final 30 days of the Parliamentary year, John Howard has used his majority in the Senate to push through a horde of bills that change in very fundamental ways how law in Australia works.
For anyone who hasn't been following the play-by-play
* You are no longer innocent until proven guilty if the police decide to charge you as a terror suspect.
* You can be held for up to 14 days in a prison cell without being even charged of a crime if the police think its in their best interest.
* Freedom of speech was a thing of the past. You can now be jailed for seditious writing or criticising Our Glorious Leader's country.
* Our welfare system will now just stop paying pensions to 100,000 disadvantaged Australians and single parents. Instead we're going to start using the American Welfare to Work model.
* All that I.R. reform that people were talking about? Passed unoquivically. You can be denied a job for not negotiating a private contract with your employer, fired for not providing a medical certificate to your employer after a sick day, or refusing to work a shift you can't make. Of course if you work for a company with less than 100 employees it's different. Your boss no longer needs to provide a reason for firing you. Hell, he can fire you for not responding to his sexual advances.
* Like America, convicted felons can no longer vote in this country. Or any young person who isn't enrolled the day after an election is called. Or any recent immigrant who doesnt' front up to the ballot with full photo ID. The poor, the young and the aspirational migrant are now going to find it very hard to vote (and they all traditionally vote labour). On the flip side after years of succesfully avoiding huge expensive acidic multi-million dollar electoral campaigns, the Senate have finaly passed a bill allowing soft money contributions to be made anonymously. Rich Australians and companies will find it easier to support the liberal party than ever before.
* Nuclear waste can now be processed in the Australian territories, regardless of the desires of the state or premiers.
* Telstra is now fully privatised. What Howard began on the condition that he would only sell a minority share in the company so as to keep Australians in control of their own phone lines ended this year as Howard said keeping the main share was uneconomic and a bad idea anyway. His pet senate ushered the bill in.
* Voluntary Student Unionism is in. It will come into complete effect come July 1 2006. Compulsary Student Unions are now criminalised with steep fines placed on any university that dares to try to charge so much as an amenities fee. It was rushed through the senate in under 2 hours of debate after Steve Fielding of Family First sold his vote to the government. Of course noone knows what John Howard offered him in his private thursday morning meeting with the senator but seeing as Fielding's drafting a private members bill to illegalise abortion drugs in this country I'm sure we'll get something in exchange for the loss of campus life on universities around Australia.
The Greens, the ALP, the democrats and even Barnaby Joyce can't muster enough votes to stop any bill that the Howard government brings up and the Howard government is using this to change Australia in ways nobody realised they would last election. There's no point them even turning up to work - debates are being stifled and John Howard is just getting whatever he wants passed.
This is what a mandate means. This is what happens when you give control of both houses to one party. And they have two more years to keep doing it.