Power’s in balance after rise of the crossbenchers
LABOR has been swept away by strong swings in NSW and Queensland, leaving Australia facing a hung Parliament with both houses to be controlled by independents and a surging Greens party.
Labor and the Coalition each fell short last night of winning the majority 76 seats needed to govern in their own right and last night both sides immediately started wooing the four independents and one Green who secured seats in the House of Representatives.
I, for one, am breathing a collossal sigh of relief. This whole exercise has been useful for clearly demonstrating that that the idea of having an atheist Prime Minister is ultimately meaningless, irrelevant and carries with it no guarantee of spontaneous social enlightenment or progress.
I was, and still am, perplexed as to the reasoning behind Julia Gillard's spontaneous proclamation of godlessness given that she then immediately proceeded to systematically piss off and alienate the entire godless demographic. As for the general public, the proclamation was greeted with as much shock as the fact that she is female and has red hair. No one gave a flying fuck. Some feeble attempts were made to escalate her godlessness as wedge issue by the churches and "family focus" groups - but they were completely and utterly ignored. At least I find some comfort in that.
A brief synopsis of Gillard's mindset -
* The Great Firewall of Australia - she had the perfect opportunity to drop this like a stinking turd. She didn't. The censorship scheme has been riddled with bullets technically, displayed her government for the secretive sneaks that they are and was overwhelmingly rejected (90+%) by the general public in every poll conducted. Yet she insisted on proceeding business as usual - using the rationale that if the government could control what we see at the cinema, only stupid people would think they should not have the same control over the 'net. On its heels a proposed scheme for ISP data retention surfaced, exceeding the insanity of any such similar scheme proposed anywhere else. The proposal would effectively create individual personal dossiers on every 'net user detailing their every online activity, right down to each email and chat connection. A freedom of information request to obtain the proposal document finally succeeded - and what was released was a document with
90% of the content redacted with thick black marker pen. There is more than just a hint of the stench of mindless Stalinist authoritarianism around Gillard.
* Refusal to even revisit the subject of establishing full equal standing for gay relationships/marriage, despite majority public support and having
Penny Wong as an openly lesbian senior minister in her government.
* And the cherry on top - pledging to expand the school chaplain program [
1][
2][
3].
Of course, this is not a comprehensive list, but it's a disgraceful one. None of these things can even be justified as clever politics - they are not, they are vote losers. Rather it shows that despite the claim of godlessness, Gillard is neither progressive nor a freethinker. In fact she is a retrograde conservative of the worst kind.
There is a lesson here for all the confirmation bias junkies that love to wave around "studies" of how superior atheists are to theists in every respect. They are not. They bleed and shit the same. I am celebrating Gillard's loss. Her atheism is cosmetic - and it is meaningless. The other lesson is that there are plenty of devout theists that share my concerns for the above issues - including school chaplaincy as a bad idea. I would have no qualms whatsoever electing them even if they are xtians.
Ms. Gillard, this is for you -
And this is for your dog -
Good riddance.
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