Breaking News: Turnbull has an opportunity to do the right thing.

Turnbull has an opportunity to do the right thing.

 As i am sure everyone is aware Turnbull has inherited Abbots homophobic plebiscite on equality. The policy delays marriage equality vote in Parliament until after a non-binding public vote. Even then we have seen that the promise to have this vote before the end of the year has been dropped. Despite the only reason the Lib/Nats can give for risking LGBT lives in this way is that it was an election promise. We know from there track record that the LIb/Nats don't actually care about keeping election promises.

 Most political commentators agree that Turnbull made a deal with the radical right of his party for the leadership after Abbots behavior became too bizarre to ignore. This deal with the devil seems to have included delaying marriage equality in Australia. 

 It should also be noted that the Lib/Nats plan for marriage equality would not give true equality to LGBT Australians. The documents show that anyone would be free to discriminate against gay people and pretend they were not in fact married. That is not equality,

So to sum all that up the Lib/Nat plan would:

It is no going to happen this year.
It is unnecessary.
It will be a hugely expensive waste of money.
It will provide funds for the hate groups to force channels to spread hate speech and vilify the LGBT community. 
It will provide funds for the hate groups to spread misinformation about the LGBT community.
It will include having a plebiscite that would not be binding.
Politicians have already said they will not abide by the plebiscite decision f it was for equality. 
Marriage equality would still then have to pass through Parliament at some unspecified date in the future.
True marriage equality would not be achieved because same-sex marriages would be subject to legal sanctioned discrimination.
It could cost lives.

 Turnbull has said that he believes the "debate" would be polite and civil. He has said that Australia has no place for homophobia. He has said homophobia wouldn't be tolerated in Australia. However he has failed to act when instances of homophobia have occurred. 

But the far-right within his party have done him a favor. They have proved him wrong. Before the official "debate" even started. They have released flyers that are misleading, inaccurate, and homophobic, they are in no way civil. 

 These disgusting flyers try to use Nelson Mandela in an attack on LGBT families and their children, which the Mandela foundation has declared was unauthorized and does not align with Nelson Mandalas views as he stood against homophobia. The flyers also attacked a school anti-bullying program and pretended that it was somehow linked to Australia's marriage laws.

A right wing newspaper that has previously printed racist comic in reaction to Aboriginal youth being tortured has now published a homophobic and anti-Semitic comic by the same "artist" that equates marriage equality with Nazis. As anyone with a passing knowledge of history or access to the internet should know, homosexual men were persecuted and killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust.
 It gets worse as the ACL hate group have made similar claims before, and it is all over the internet how disrespectful and inaccurate that was. I doubt the artist or the editors could have missed seeing this and how vicious this comic would be. Interestingly this my actually be covered under Australians anti-hate speech laws as it attacks not just gays but also gay Jews.

 This has given Turnbull an opportunity to announce with great disappointment that he was wrong and that the far-right can obviously not behave civilly, and so have proven they cant be given public funds to spread such dangerous lies. He can declare that they have forced his hand and that the plebiscite is off, he can then immediately vote in Parliament for true marriage equality. He can easily use the comic and the disgusting flyers as justification that overrides any promises he may have made behind closed doors. His first priority must be to the Australian people after all.

 At the very least he can concede that all material on the anti-marriage side must be fact checked, and that any applicantsfor the funding will have a background check, and any uncivil, untrue or discriminatory past conduct against the LGBT community will eliminate them from the process.

 The attack on LGBT Australians and their family's is so vile Turnbull could even use it as a legitimate reason to strengthen the laws protecting LGBT Australians from hate speech and discrimination.

Hate speech flyers

The Liberals need to be a bit more liberal.

 Take a few steps to the left Malcolm.

 Just a quick bit of back ground. Tony Abbot outraged Australians with his far right opinions and his policy attacks on the poor, sick, refugees, and gays. He seemed to be set on breaking every one of his election promises. He made more and more ridiculous comments and was eventually ousted by Malcolm Turnbull. 

 Turnbull was believed by many to be more middle ground in his views, for instance he favored a marriage equality vote in Parliament rather than a costly and decisive plebiscite.
But when Malcom Turnbulll got in he continued on with Abbot like policy, he now wanted a plebiscite, he attacked medicare and leading up to the election he kowtowed to the radical right wing nuts in their attacks on children. 

 He ignored the fact gays were the victims when first commenting on Orlando. He later promised to have zero tolerance for homophobia but example after example saw him not speaking out against it. 
 It surfaced a few days before the election that the government was going to give taxpayers money to anti-gay hate groups so they could argue against equality, in the lead up to a plebiscite.

 So the election doesn't look good for the Turnbull government with the two major party's pretty much neck and neck, there has been a large swing against Turnbull's government but neither party look likely to have the numbers to form a majority government.

 Cory Bernardi is a far right wing homophobe, conspiracy theorist and member of Turnbull's government. Cory has come out calling on Turnbull, if he manages to form government, to ignore the voter backlash and stall the plebiscite. He went on to claim that equality, is just a 'trendy, fringe issue'. I totally disagree, i  think equal rights, preventing youth suicide, upholding our constitution,  and protecting children from bullying is an extremely important issue. 

 He seemed to be implying that the swing against Turnbull was because the Turnbull government wasn't far right enough... I maybe could understand this argument if the swing had been to further right partys, like the dreaded Fred Niles abomination party, or Family First* (*conditions apply) but it wasn't, the swing was towards Labor which is slightly left of Turnbull's party and is in favor of a parliamentary vote on equality and is against the homophobic plebiscite.

 Now Cory is one of those radical right wingers that try to turn the tables on their victims, you know the type, claiming that straight people would be personally harmed if gays had equal rights. I think this outburst from him is just along similar lines, the people showed in the election that they are against the costly, homophobic and non-binding plebiscite, that they are for marriage equality. 

 But Cory cant have that, so he tries to flip the table and claim that the voters moving to a (slightly) more left party is evidence that the voters want a more right wing government, i know it makes no sense but little he has said ever does.

 Personally i feel that both political partys in Australia need to shuffle to the left a bit. 
 When people like Cory Bernardi, and George Christensen are welcome in your party (Coalition) you know your teetering on the edge of the far right and need to run left a ways.
 Labor looks set to form a minority government but I do hope that Turnbull and his Coalition takes the election result as clear confirmation that we demand truth in politics and we demand equality. We need a leader that will stand up to homophobic insanity, we want our equal rights.

Update:

 It looks like a small percentage of this swing against Turnbull did go right wing, with Pauline Hansons racist One Nation getting a seat. 
 One could argue that this might still be in support of the LGBT community as much of Australia's news media in Australia, misrepresented the Orlando hate crime as a terror attack and failed to disclose its homophobic nature. 
 I can imagine some low information voters voting for the Islamophobic Hanson in misguided support of gay people, without realising how backwards and misinformed her views truly are.

Sources:

http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDefault-20499.htm

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/apr/04/marriage-equality-corey-bernardi-says-plebiscite-question-a-fifth-order-issue

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/jul/03/marriage-equality-cory-bernardi-says-no-need-to-hurry-on-plebiscite

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/election-2016-liberal-senator-cory-bernardi-says-malcolm-turnbulls-future-is-up-for-debate-20160704-gpxuqe.html

 https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/17142

Barnaby Joyce war on terriors and decency

Who let the dogs in?

Johnny Depp is currently in Australia filming the latest Pirates of the Caribbean move. It was discovered that he had brought his two little Yorkshire terriers, Pistol and Boo, in on his private plane, without proper authorisation. 

Barnaby Joyce National party minister, agriculture minister and popularly referred to as an all round asshat, commented to Australia’s media that;

“It’s time that Pistol and Boo buggered off back to the United States,”

and

“Now Mr Depp has to either take his dogs back to California or we’re going to have to euthanise them. He’s got about 50 hours left to remove the dogs.”

You might remember Barnaby Joyce from his bizarre behavior when PETA exposed cruelty in the Australian wool industry. 

He also attended another gay hate rally where he said he was opposed to marriage equality because;

“We know that the best protection for those girls (his daughters) is that they get themselves into a secure relationship with a loving husband and I want that to happen for them."

and 

"I don’t want any legislator to take that right away from me.”

No one is sure how giving equal rights to Australians would possibly prevent his daughters from marrying men. Ignoring the apparent misogyny of his comment, my best guess is that he has such a low opinion of women that he believes the majority of men will "jump ship" and stop pretending to be straight as soon as equality comes to Australia, leaving his daughters with few men to marry.  
If you have a better explanation please comment below.

 Barnaby Joyce outrageious attack on Australia tourism and its film industry has met with eye rolling and disgust within the sensible Australian community. People understand that Australia needs to keep animal diseases out, but we even today, expect our ministers to measure their words and not threaten to kill peoples pets. A few friends have suggested that Mr Joyce may be jealous of Johnny  Depp's looks as Barnaby oddly mentioned how attractive Depp was in his statement. 
Its strange behavior and bizarre behavior seems to be way to common with out politicians at the moment.

Clive Palmer billionaire and politician said;


"His actions could potentially put the movie project in jeopardy and damage our relationship with the US, costing thousands of jobs and millions of dollars in exports." 

 kyle Sandilands an Australian radio and TV personality said to Barnaby in an interview; 

 "You sound like an absolute clown telling the guy to bugger off to Hollywood or we'll kill his dogs," 

 and

 "You're a government minister, not some idiot off the street mouthing off to a news camera. Have some decency."

  

and    

“You’re an absolute joke, Barnaby ... I'm going off because you sound like an insensitive wanker. That's what you sound like, Barnaby. You're a joke, you're a disgrace and you should retract your statement and reword it properly,"

 I could not find a comment on Barnaby Joyce's continued inappropriate behavior by our Prime Minister and possible Reptilian Tony Abbot. 

While incredibly Barnaby Joyce still holds his position as agriculture minister, the story does have a happy ending as the two little dogs managed to flee his clutches and are safe from his nefarious attentions.