News

Published: 24 July 2020

A survey in the UK has found that close to half the population oppose easing restrictions to enable gender to be changed on official documents.

YouGov conducted an online poll of 1,688 adults in June and found 47% opposed moves to make it easier to change gender on documents, while only 28% supported the move.

According to UK government estimates, between 200,000 and 500,000 people in the UK claim to have a gender different to their biological sex.

At present, 5,500 of these people have legally changed their birth certificate from the biological reality.

The YouGov poll also found that most oppose giving individuals who claim a gender different from their biological sex access to opposite sex bathrooms unless they have had “sex-change” surgery.

The survey highlights that the transgender movement, which has been heavily marketed by the mainstream media in recent years, has made great inroads into convincing people that gender is a social construct.

The poll found that 40% agreed with the statement that “a transgender woman is a woman”, while 36 percent disagreed.

But there are reasons for hope with signs the tide is turning back to a common sense view of gender.

World Rugby is looking at banning men who think they are women from playing women’s rugby.

A World Rugby report detailed that there is “at least a 20-30% greater risk” of injury when a female player is tackled by a man who thinks he’s a woman.

The document reported the obvious: men who think they’re women have significant physical strength advantages over women.

There is also a growing detransition movement, with those suffering gender dysphoria seeking to return to living as their biological sex.

Published: 23 July 2020

Sir John Kerr with a portrait of the Queen

You may have heard about the kerfuffle over recently published letters between Australia’s Governor-General Sir John Kerr and Buckingham Palace back in 1975.

In one sense they reveal nothing new – confirming that Sir John dismissed then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam on 11 November before he informed the Queen.

The events leading up to that dismissal have been described many times. They include the books “Matters for Judgment” by Sir John Kerr and “Head of State” by his private secretary Sir David Smith.

In October 1975, the Whitlam Government was in trouble. The Senate was refusing to pass the supply bills needed to authorise payment for Whitlam’s controversial spending program.

The Australian Constitution (s 57) wisely provides a way to resolve stalemates of this kind between the two houses of federal parliament. Prime Minister Whitlam could have asked the Governor-General to dissolve the entire parliament and hold elections for both the House of Representatives and the full Senate – a “double dissolution”.

If Whitlam had won such an election, he could have convened a joint sitting of both houses to pass the supply bills. But he refused to follow the constitutional process, possibly fearing an election loss.

What started as a political problem for Whitlam then became a constitutional problem for Kerr. Whitlam was seeking to govern without supply, in breach of the Constitution. Kerr’s duty as Governor-General was to ensure that parliament operated in accordance with the Constitution. A clash was inevitable.

The events that followed throw considerable light on the “reserve powers” of the Governor-General.

The Governor-General’s “ordinary powers” include assenting to laws passed by both houses of parliament and acting in accordance with the advice of Commonwealth ministers. In a small number of matters, the Governor-General exercises “reserve powers”, acting without ministerial advice.

The two most important reserve powers are to appoint or dismiss the Prime Minister (s 64). Ordinarily, by convention, the Governor-General will appoint the leader of the party or coalition with a majority in the House of Representatives. In unusual circumstances, the Governor-General may dismiss or appoint a Prime Minister on his own initiative.

On 11 November 1975, John Kerr was faced with a situation that needed to be resolved by the Australian people in a general election. Since calling an election is an “ordinary power”, Kerr could only do this on the advice of the Prime Minister, which Whitlam refused to give. The only way an election could be called was for Kerr to dismiss Whitlam and appoint Malcolm Fraser as caretaker prime minister, on condition that Fraser would advise him to call an election.

Fraser agreed. The election a few weeks later gave him a landslide win, endorsing the Governor-General’s action.

The correspondence with the Palace confirms that the Queen could not tell Kerr what to do, since the reserve powers of the Crown under the Australian Constitution can only be exercised by the Governor-General.

These events, and the Palace letters, confirm that the Constitution makes the Governor-General the effective Australian Head of State.

Those who are campaigning for “an Australian Head of State” ignore the fact that the past eleven Governors-General have all been Australians – from Sir Paul Hasluck in 1969 to David Hurley today.

Australia has one of the oldest constitutions in the world. Drafted by leading Australian statesmen, many of whom professed a Christian faith, it has given us stable government for nearly 120 years.

FamilyVoice has defended the Australian Constitution for nearly 50 years, and will continue to do so with your help and support.

Peter Downie - National Director

Published: 22 July 2020

 

The opposition and minor parties have jointly expressed alarm that Premier Daniel Andrews’ new Crisis Council of Cabinet will hand Andrews and seven of his ministers almost unchecked powers for six months.

In late April, the Labor government used its numbers to quash a Greens motion to set up a cross-party committee to scruti­nise the decisions of the Crisis Council, which will operate until at least September 30.

The Labor government instead handed oversight to the Labor-chaired Public Accounts and Estimates Committee, which has a majority of Labor members.

A new omnibus Bill in Victoria has passed after just three days of scrutiny, even as the Bill made unprecedented amendments to statutes addressing the health system, courts, prisons, local government and the rental market.

The Bill has troubled Australian Lawyers Alliance Victorian presi­dent Jeremy King, who said, “The proposed new laws will im­pose detention conditions that amount to full-time lockdown and isolation for some prisoners.”

Criminal Bar Association of Victoria chair Daniel Gurvich, QC, has told the Sydney Morning Herald that about one third of the bill altered a wide range of criminal justice issues, like judge-only trials and the placement of prisoners, but industry experts and MPs were given no time for consultation.

The Bill gives the Crisis Council the power to change justice system regulations without having to pass legislation in the Parliament, “so that justice processes can be quickly adapted to changing public health requirements”.

The majority of the amendments expire in September, except several environmental and rental market changes, which will be reviewed in 2021.

Before the Bill was passed in full, Victorian Liberals Leader Mi­chael O’Brien said the 305 page bill was not adequately scruti­nised, with just three days of examination.

“The Opposition was only provided with the Bill on Monday night, leaving little time for consultation with the many Victo­rians whose lives will be affected by it before it is debated on Thursday.”

FamilyVoice Victoria State Director Peter Stevens said, “It is in­appropriate to sacrifice the oversight of power for temporary safety. As U.S. President Benjamin Franklin warned, ‘Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.’ ”

Published: 16 July 2020

This week Bari Weiss quit the New York Times with a sensational resignation letter.

It provides a fly-on-the-wall look at why Left-leaning companies are fighting over the same market and becoming more extreme, more emotionally-driven, with every passing page.

She writes, “...a new consensus has emerged in the press, but perhaps especially at this paper: that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else.”

In her assessment, “Twitter is not on the masthead of The New York Times. But Twitter has become its ultimate editor.”

Worse still, this enlightened NYT elite felt empowered to make racist remarks about their own colleague. It is self-evident in their attitude that their in-group must shrink in size.

Weiss said, “My own forays into Wrongthink have made me the subject of constant bullying by colleagues who disagree with my views. They have called me a Nazi and a racist; I have learned to brush off comments about how I’m ‘writing about the Jews again.’”

She admits that this led to self-censorship by her and others, which further perpetuated the rigid orthodoxy.

“If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome. Online venom is excused so long as it is directed at the proper targets,” she wrote.

Weiss ironically concludes her letter with Adolph Ochs’ famous 1896 aspiration: “to make of the columns of The New York Times a forum for the consideration of all questions of public importance, and to that end to invite intelligent discussion from all shades of opinion.”

This orthodoxy from the old mass media corporations happened due a constrictor-like squeeze in revenue.

There was a multi-sided revenue collapse due to loss of advertising exclusivity and loss of readership size. This squeeze motivated them to abandon “all shades of opinion”.

Most of the old mass media of newspapers, TV and radio are now politically and ideologically driven to attract highly emotionally invested, paid-up readers, who want opinions that affirm their ideology.

When the rivers of gold that were printed classifieds disappeared and TV lost eyeballs to social media, the old mass media lost to new online platforms in the race to match up customers and advertisers. Advertising income collapsed.

In a crowded market for news, slow-moving print-first mass media needed to convince readers to pay more for a product they can get cheaply or even free, according to Chris Berg of Cryptoeconomics.

This has driven many mass media companies to extreme specialisation.

According to Berg, “Newspapers now seek readers who have more emotionally invested in that particular newspaper brand. They’re the ones more likely to pay the higher subscription fees.”

“Ideology is a specialisation. Partisanship is a specialisation.”

“In other words, multi-sided market collapse explains the dominance of ideologically driven media outlets in the digital age,” Berg concludes.

In the end, the old mass media platforms are fighting over the same extreme-Left readers, a clear minority.

At the same time, Facebook is lapping up the advertising dollars of the political right, centre and left, while banning content creators who dissent from “the Silicon Valley bubble of omniscience”.

The Left preaches a lot about diversity, but cancels all opinions that dissent from its orthodoxy.

Twitter is increasingly being treated by media organisations overseas and in Australia as if it is representative of the general population.

What these organisations do not realise is that the end-game in chasing a cocooned minority that wants to shrink in size, rather than grow in membership, means the Left can only cannibalise itself.

Darryl Budge - FamilyVoice WA