Malaysia, Confusion About Teh Gays and more

Okay this is going to be a bit of a rant so here goes:

Let's Play Refo Swap

What.The.Hell?

No, seriously, let me see if I get this straight. In order to deal with the problem of over crowded detention centres and an increasingly stressed system, our national leaders have decided to send 800 asylum seekers (people who have already entered the process of applying for refugee status), off to Malaysia, a country that while full of truly excellent people, nevertheless has a much larger problem with asylum seekers (90,000 at last count), is NOT a signatory to the Refugee treaties and has a real human rights problem in dealing with asylum seekers.

In return we as a country will be accepting 4000 people that have been assessed as being genuine refugees.

Oh and on top of that it's going to cost Australia 300 million dollars on top of what is already spent on processing asylum seekers under our laws and the treaties we've signed up to.

This isn't a solution, it's a desperate attempt to appear to be doing something while not actually doing anything worthwhile. This is a once off deal while the Government frantically trawls around the pacific (leaving Naeru well alone) to find someone to host their "Regional Processing" centre.

gah!

People do get a little confused

According to Victorian state Liberal member Geoff Shaw, being gay and expecting to be able to show the love for your partner is akin to demanding the right to travel at 150k/h on the roads. This is a new one and does show some originality, for which I can only applaud Geoff however, sadly, he very quickly falls back into the same tired old lines equating a relationship between two loving adults with demanding the right to abuse children.

All that before he even got to the meat of the issue he was supposed to be dealing with (the ability of religious organisations to discriminate even in non religious activities).

Sigh.

Of course this is apparently the same man who objects to the now traditional "Welcome to country" ceremonies (where the original indigenous inhabitants of the land being used are acknowledged) on the grounds that it all belonged to God anyway.

This is getting old. We've been hearing the same tired old arguments for a while now (about 150 years by my count), and yet the doomsayers have proven to be unerringly wrong. When does the message start getting through that allowing gay people to live like everyone else is not going to cause the flame death of the universe.

Denial is not just a river in egypt

This one is specifically for Wollongong people. The news that former Wollongong Council General Manager Rod Oxley intends to run for Lord Mayor in the September election is both not surprising an awesome in its ability to ignore reality.

For those of you not in the know, Rod Oxley was the General Manager of Wollongong Council during the scandal that lead to the elected Council being sacked due to "systemic corruption". While Oxley was never charged himself, the Independent Commission Against Corruption found that he had engaged in "conduct that was liable to allow, encourage or cause the occurrence of corrupt conduct", a damning indictment of his management of an organisation as large and important as Wollongong Council.

Rod is as free to run for Council as anyone else in Wollongong, I'm certainly not trying to take that away from him in any way shape or form. However let's be honest, his chances are slim, and I'm pretty sure he's going to be hard pressed to vote any significant voting block.