So-called "child welfare" again

If a mother is a drug addict who repeatedly harms or neglects her children the social workers will leave the children with the parent until the kid dies. If you are a responsible person, however, just suspicion is enough to cause your children to be taken away from you. Note the Fascist tone of the responsible government minister below, with no contrition for a gross government bungle shown at all

A grieving couple wrongly suspected of murdering their baby are facing a court battle to have their other children returned. Roy Orchard and partner Kylee Jenkin's lives were torn apart when their daughter Kharma, nine months, died in June, sparking a homicide investigation because doctors thought she had head injuries caused by being shaken. But an autopsy later revealed Kharma died from meningitis and not from shaken-baby syndrome.

As they struggled to prove their innocence, the Rockhampton couple were dealt another blow when child protection officers removed their other two children Ty and Breeanan because they believed they were at risk. Wiping away tears, Ms Jenkin, 34, told The Sunday Mail: "I just feel like it's getting harder because after everything we've been through we still can't have our family back. "Not only did they think we shook our baby girl, they think that we could harm our other children, too. "I am a mum and without my kids I am nothing."

The autopsy also revealed the little girl had a rare genetic brain disorder - congenital disorder of glycosylation. The condition, which was not diagnosed by doctors who treated Kharma, makes those with it prone to infections and prevents them from thriving.

But the police are refusing to close the case and the couple have been told if they want their children back they must fight for them through the courts. "We just want to be a family again and for the police and child protection people to apologise for what they have put us through," Ms Jenkin said. "I think that's the least they could do."

The family's nightmare started on June 15, when Kharma started vomiting and became lethargic with a temperature. Ms Jenkin took her to a GP, who sent her to Rockhampton Hospital. When they arrived, the baby was unconscious and doctors thought she had head injuries after being shaken by her parents. They told the couple they didn't expect she would survive and then police took Mr Orchard away for questioning.

He cried as he told The Sunday Mail how he couldn't be with his sick daughter. "My family needed me but the police took me from them," he said. "It really hurt that I couldn't be there for my little girl and it hurt that someone could accuse me of shaking her."

When Kharma died, Ms Jenkin was also questioned by police. She was pregnant at the time, but later lost the unborn baby. She said she was visited by detectives while she was delivering the stillborn child. "They have given us no time to grieve," she said. "Having your children die is a life-changing thing. "We've had two funerals for our babies in six months and on top of that my lawyer told me the police were looking to charge either both of us or just Roy with murder."

Mr Orchard, 38, a meatworker, said he was upset at being branded a monster. "After Kharma died, people wouldn't trust me with their kids any more," he said. "We were vilified. People started ringing me up and screaming at us that they knew what we had done to our little girl. "I'm relieved the autopsy has proved we did nothing wrong, but I'll never get over how I was humiliated."

The couple light a candle in memory of Kharma every night, next to a photo frame containing pictures from every month of her life. Ms Jenkin said most of her photographs of Kharma are on a computer, which was taken by police during their investigation and has still not been returned. "Kharma was so happy and always smiling. Our other children don't understand what's happened and all they want to do is come home to us," she said.

When contacted by The Sunday Mail Detective Sergeant Anthony Buxton, of Rockhampton police, refused to apologise to the family. He initially denied he was conducting a murder investigation, until The Sunday Mail quoted a child protection report that states: "Mr Buxton stated that due to the possibility that Kharma's death is the result of her being shaken, the matter is being treated as a homicide investigation". Det-Sgt Buxton said: "The family were not aware that we were conducting a murder investigation. "Legislation requires that we do this investigation and that doesn't mean we should apologise to the family for doing it. "The investigation is still ongoing because we can't close the case without paperwork and have to present a report to the coroner. "I know the family don't understand that, but at the end of the day we are doing what we have to do."

Child Safety Minister Desley Boyle said she could not comment on individual cases. "The Department of Child Safety does not remove children from parents unless it has been determined that the parents are unable or unwilling to ensure the child's safety," she said. "I make no excuses for removing a child in these situations. "Parents should be aware that their children will be placed in care if they are harmed or at risk of harm. "Parents must be able to clearly and unequivocally demonstrate that they are willing and able to provide care and protection for their children before the department will consider reunification."

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Review of "Jonestown: The Power and Myth of Alan Jones" By Chris Masters

Prolific Leftist historian, Ross Fitzgerald , says that the "hitjob" biography of conservative broadcaster Alan Jones yields one sorry fact: the book reveals more about its author than it does its subject. It may be noted that Jones himself has not dignified the book with a response

Chris Masters has a fine CV, especially in the field of television documentaries. What a shame, then, that he has written such a mean-spirited and quite unbalanced biographical expose of Sydney-based broadcaster Alan Jones. Why, for example, would he give such credence to Jones's disgruntled former employee at 2UE, the eccentric, extreme right-winger Michael Darby (whose contribution is praised in an entire paragraph in the acknowledgments), yet not interview the former chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Authority, David Flint? Could it be because Flint is an unabashed Jones supporter while Darby clearly has an anti-Jones axe to grind?

Jonestown is full of pseudo-psychoanalysis and pop psychology, with Masters labelling Jones as exhibiting "a range of symptoms consistent with narcissistic personality disorder". Even more troubling, he maintains that the "masking of his apparent homosexuality is a defining feature of the Jones persona" and he describes Jones as "the hidden homosexual, forever hunting for love among the twentysomethings".

At least two points need to be made about such claims. Highlighting his supposed sexual orientation would be justified, in my opinion, if Jones were shown to be a pedophile, a sexual predator or if he were hypocritical in his discussions of and about sexuality. Yet there is no suggestion Jones is a child molester or any evidence that he was or is homophobic. Quite the contrary.

Equally important, it does not seem to have seriously occurred to Masters or Jones's other detractors that the broadcaster may not be sexually active at all. Had there been any lovers, disgruntled or otherwise, surely they would have put up their hands by now. Masters admits that no evidence of sexual impropriety has emerged from Jones's time as a schoolteacher in Queensland and NSW, his years as an athletic and football coach or at any time since. So what is the point, other than titillation, of rehashing what Masters calls the notorious "London dunny" incident of December 1988, to which Jones has always protested his innocence? The Crown dropped all charges, so why should he still be hounded over the matter?

Perhaps the most interesting part of Jonestown is Masters's evocation of Jones's rural Queensland childhood, especially of his relationship to his trade unionist father, Charlie, and his mother, Elizabeth. Known as Beth, his mother -- a great believer in education as a liberator -- is by far the strongest influence in Jones's life. Masters usefully puts it thus: "Alan's tribute to his mother is part and parcel of him, it is visceral, personified in the man from birth. He is Alan Belford Jones. He honours her, too, by taking her maiden name for his company, Belford Productions."

Also illuminating is Masters's examination of Jones's quite unusual and deeply entrenched pattern of work and rest. Connected with his "prodigious work ethic", Jones, who usually nods off late in the evening and rises about 3am, has never needed more than four hours' sleep a night. Quite often he makes do with less. His close female friend and occasional social partner, former tennis champion Madonna Schacht, first noticed his relentless energy when he was teaching at Brisbane Grammar School for boys. "There was a fierceness about his aspirations, a desperate quality in that he drove himself to the point of exhaustion," she said. "In the (1960s), when he was relatively poor, he used to stay up all night correcting French examination papers, only to earn a pittance. These were papers sent to him by the Board of External Studies. It was possible for teachers to earn a bit of extra cash ... in this way. He willed himself to stay awake."

As Masters points out, although Jones and Schacht "did not get engaged, marry or become lovers, as many presumed they did", they have remained close through incredibly difficult times. The sexual-homosexual claptrap in Jonestown overshadows Masters's examination of important topics such as Jones's support for Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen's "Joh for PM" campaign, then for Pauline Hanson and, more recently, Tony Abbott; his exercise of power in regard to NSW politics, especially the leaders of the state ALP; his influence over federal politicians, including Prime Minister John Howard; and the "cash for comment" saga.

It is important to understand that Jones is a consummate populist on the airways. Starting at Radio 2UE in March 1985, he built up a huge following of largely middle-aged listeners, almost all of whom followed him to 2GB, where he is clearly king of the Sydney airwaves. Yet even here Masters is unnecessarily intemperate in his analysis of Jones's broadcasting style. Describing him as "an angry man", Masters ups the ante by saying: "The rages explode without warning like terrorist bombs." This foolish claim converts the broadcaster to nothing less than "Jihad Jones". Thus, in a chapter entitled The Godfather, Masters describes the broadcaster engaging in what he terms "a Jones jihad", which is mischievous and quite absurd.

Many attacks on Jones are motivated by envy, which is so much more corrosive than jealousy. Jealousy wants to possess what another has; envy aims to obliterate utterly, even if in the process the attack brings down the attacker as well. It may be the case that Masters, as well as Jones, will finish up damaged by this shabby book.

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Update:

Below is a letter written to the editor of "The Australian" by Michael Darby in response to the comment about him above. I know the inimitable Michael Darby personally and know him as more a libertarian than a conservative. But it is of course customary for Leftists like FitzGerald to describe libertarians as "extreme-Right". Libertarians are extreme only about the importance and value of individual liberty. My understanding of the differences between Jones and Darby is that they are personal

On 11 November 2006 The Australian published an extraordinary attack on me by Professor Ross Fitzgerald. This is the same Ross Fitzgerald who was more than once pleased to share a platform with me on the side of independence for East Timor, while praising my enduring support for the East Timorese in the face of right wing endorsement of the Indonesian occupation. This is the same Ross Fitzgerald who applauded the campaign which I waged in Queensland with Senator George Georges and others against the ID card. It is very strange that an historian of quality should describe me as any kind of right-winger, and equally strange that a man whose panama hat is more flamboyant than mine should describe me as eccentric.

Professor Fitzgerald criticises Chris Masters on his methodology, but tosses around anti-Darby epithets without taking the trouble to pick up the phone and speak to me.

I stand by my criticisms of Alan Jones, made in a Four Corners program (in 2002 as I recall). My observations then evoked no criticism from anyone, not even Professor Ross Fitzgerald.





Wacky Leftist attack on Australian conservatives in an alleged textbook

By Christopher Pearson

The postmodern Left has just launched a new, unusually vicious polemic. It's called The War on Democracy: Conservative Opinion in the Australian Press. Its authors are Niall Lucy, a Derrida scholar, and Steve Mickler and it was published by the University of Western Australia Press. Luke Slattery, Miranda Devine, Gerard Henderson, Janet Albrechtsen, Andrew Bolt, Michael Duffy and I all rate a denunciatory chapter.

Readers familiar with our work will have noticed that while Slattery has some old-fashioned ideas about the Western canon and the secondary school curriculum, his inclusion is an outright category mistake because he's not remotely conservative in any ordinary sense of the word. Henderson is more of a sceptical observer than an ideologue these days and often found himself broadly in sympathy with the Hawke and Keating governments when they were in office. Duffy, who wrote an appreciative biographical account of Mark Latham and cut his teeth in anarchist punk bands, is too unpredictable to count as a dyed-in-the-wool anything. Albrechtsen, a fan of the republic, Malcolm Turnbull and market solutions to almost every problem, is of the political Right but, again, scarcely a true conservative.

Even if, for the sake of argument, it's granted that the term is roughly applicable to the rest of us, it's clear that the authors' intention is demonising rather than descriptive or diagnostic. The niceties of distinguishing between neo-con, palaeo-con and Tory seem to be beneath them, or perhaps beyond the ken of their anticipated undergraduate audience. For this is a textbook, designed for the impressionable young in media and cultural studies courses and the semiotics end of political science. It's also intended as an object lesson, a terrible warning of what to expect from the academic Left if you stray too far from its orthodoxies.

Its opening gambit is to assert that the villains of the piece are in some sense waging war on democracy. This, I'm sure, will come as a surprise to my colleagues, all of whom were strong supporters of a universal adult suffrage for Australian parliaments when last I checked, even if some share my enthusiasm for the British House of Lords in the pre-Blair era. (Strange as it may seem, there's a persuasive argument that the Lords, where membership was a hereditary lucky dip topped up with politically appointed bishops and life peers, was a more representative body than an entirely appointed or party-list elected house. But I digress.)

The authors have a concept of democracy that is radically different from the workaday world of parliamentary representative chambers and other elective bodies on which we rely. For them, "the democratic project remains, and must always remain, unfinished, since there could never come a time when we could be satisfied that we had enough democracy, enough freedom, equality and friendship for all the different social differences there are today and others that come in the future".

We are at war with democracy, they say, not as "a system of representative government but as a project without origin and which remains, and must remain, forever unfinished", "an ongoing democratisation of ever more diverse and hitherto obscured areas of society". This borders on the millennial as well as the metaphysical and strikes me as an ill-considered mix of the ultra-Puritan Levellers' ideals and the rhetoric of Mao Zedong's "continual revolution".

When I talk about democracy I have in mind a project with its origins embedded in Periclean Athens; with its noblest expression in Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on government of, by and for the people; with its triumph over Hitler's fascism and the collapse of the Eastern Bloc. Lucy and Mickler draw their inspiration from the soft left agenda - a critique of consumer capitalism and endorsement of "socially progressive ideas and movements, anti-authoritarian attitudes and a liberal approach to difference".

It comes as no surprise that they are hell-bent on rewriting what little they know of Australian history. "Conservatism has played no part in helping to produce Australia as a modern democratic society," they say, in the context of a discussion of women's and indigenous voting rights and extending other rights to minorities. They seem not to have heard of the pro-women's suffrage South Australian liberal premier Charles Cameron Kingston or to realise that the Commonwealth Electoral Act of 1962 and the Aboriginal Referendum of 1967 passed under Liberal-led governments. The first gay law reform in the country (more on that later) was also initiated by Murray Hill, a Liberal in the SA parliament.

I turned to the chapter devoted to yours truly, expecting ad hominem abuse but not quite a full-dress Robespierrean prosecution. "It isn't just that we think Pearson is a hypocrite; in fact we don't think 'hypocrisy' covers it. But if it was good enough to get Al Capone for tax evasion, we'll settle for showing that Pearson is different because he's hypocritical." The first evidence they adduce is that I've written in support of covenant marriage, a legally enforceable model that aims to wind back Lionel Murphy's "no-fault" divorce arrangements. They query "why a gay man would think he had any authority to comment on a woman's role in marriage", by lending support to what the Bible says on the subject. But surely everyone, whatever their sexual preference, has a legitimate concern with the survival of marriage as an institution and surely, in a pluralistic society, even people who take the Bible seriously are allowed to say so once in a while? Lucy and Mickler don't seem to have noticed the strictures of covenant marriage apply to men as well as women and that the essence of them is they're entirely voluntary.

I can't see any substance in this charge of hypocrisy, although they think it's self-evident. They then quote from an interview published by the Festival of Light, in which they detect an "obvious misattribution" on sexual politics in the '70s, but in which I'm also credited with 17 years of celibacy before my conversion to Catholicism. It was news to me and, had I seen the leaflet, I'd have corrected it at the time with rueful references to Augustine of Hippo's prayer ("Oh God, make me chaste, but not yet") and my published autobiographical essay on the subject. When I contacted the FOL on Wednesday, it became clear that, in a rushed phone conversation, admissions of 17 years of partnerless prudence in the era of AIDS had been charitably misconstrued as heroic virtue. Perhaps it explains the portentous allusion to Capone.

The next charge of hypocrisy is my "continuing lack of condemnation of some of the sickening sins of the church", especially the cover-up of child abuse by pedophile clergy. Now it's clear that most child abusers are not priests but men in de facto relationships, uncles and even fathers, although you'd never guess it if you relied on tabloid journalism and its bigoted, anti-Christian agenda. Molestation is a terrible betrayal of trust, whoever perpetrates it. The question is: how often would one have to say so before this local chapter of the Committee of Public Safety were satisfied?

The gravest charge against me is "not explaining to readers how he can be openly gay and at the same time opposed to social movements, opposed to the very idea of democratic social progress that makes it possible for him to be a public figure who is known to be other than heterosexual". Law reform didn't arrive, they tell us, "as a result of conservative activism or by divine decree. The right to be an Australian citizen who is other than heterosexual today was won by others in a struggle against conservatism and the church."

As it happens, I was involved in the struggle for homosexual law reform in SA from the beginning, in the wake of George Duncan's drowning, in an incident where members of the vice squad refused to answer questions at the inquest "on the grounds that they might tend to incriminate". I was an active member of the Social Concern Committee, which engineered the consensus that enabled Peter Duncan's reform bill to pass in the state, with a fair measure of bipartisan support. I acted as a go-between in negotiations with the Anglican and Catholic churches, which lent pivotal endorsement. The Maoists and Trotskyites who'd so effectively colonised gay lib and, like the Left to this day, regard gays as a wholly owned, natural constituency, contributed little. In the judgment of many at the time, they jeopardised reform with their revolutionary talk and ultra-leftist antics.

It's true that some conservatives and clergy vehemently opposed Duncan's bill. So did some sections of the Labor Party. I interviewed most of them and found them generally polite and, despite our differences, often affable. Lucy and Mickler perhaps might have learned something from them about civil disagreement over matters of high principle. But they betray little evidence of the curiosity or imagination needed to engage with world views other than their own. Their only really strong suit is bile.

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Greenie fraud in Victoria

A group supporting the Greens and spending thousands of dollars on the election campaign may face a probe over taking donations as a non-political charity. The Wilderness Society, set up as a charitable institution and endorsed by the Australian Taxation Office to receive tax-deductible donations, is running a campaign urging Victorians to "Vote 1 Environment". The society -- a group of self-confessed "tree huggers" on one of its websites -- pointedly backs the Greens, despite claiming to be apolitical. Greens lead candidate Greg Barber -- a virtual certainty to win a seat in the Upper House -- spruiks his credentials as a former Wilderness Society corporate campaigner on the party's website.

Federal Environment Minister Ian Campbell warned yesterday that environmental groups with tax deductibility status should not be involved in political campaigning. While the society claims not to be politically aligned, it has set up a website, www.voteenvironment.org.au, featuring the logo "Vote 1 Environment" on a green background next to a tree. The site gives three ticks to the Greens -- highlighting its policy to protect old-growth forests and water catchments -- while running question marks against the Liberals and Labor and a cross against the Nationals. The society this week also launched an advertising campaign on the issue on WIN TV.

Greens Northern Metropolitan region candidate Mr Barber advertises his ties to the group, and Williamstown candidate Michael Faltermaier also acknowledges his long-time membership. The society's Victorian website was yesterday running the headline: "How the Bracks Government is failing to address climate change". At the bottom of the page it urged Victorians to "Take Action: Put the pressure on Premier Steve Bracks and Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu to protect Victoria's old-growth forests and water catchments". Directly beneath the political call, the society urged Victorians to make tax-deductible donations to help it reduce the impacts of climate change.

As well as being able to receive tax-deductible donations as a supposedly non-political charity, the society receives income tax relief, fringe benefits tax rebates and GST concessions. The society's Victorian campaign manager Gavan McFadzean said no tax-deductible funds were used on its political campaigning. "It is a responsibility of environmental groups to educate the public and rank the environmental policies of parties so they are informed," he said. "If the Greens' policies are the best they will be ranked the best. We are not ranking the parties themselves."

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Aust scientist to give NASA original moon landing tapes



The founder of Western Australia's Environmental Protection Authority (EPA) will hand over original tapes from the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing to the American space agency, NASA. The scientific data tapes contain information about the environmental conditions on the Moon and they are being sent to the space agency because the original tapes were misplaced.

Australian physicist Brian O'Brien analysed the data after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left the equipment on the Moon. Professor O'Brien says the tapes have been stored by the Physics Department at Curtin University for many years. "So, they're 37-years-old and the only reason I've broken them out now is because NASA has released the news that they've misplaced the original tapes, information from that experiment," Professor O'Brien said. "So I thought there should be a permanent record back in the official archives. "The most important tape is one which contains measurements by a little lunar dust detector of mine and as a historic tape in itself there certainly should be a copy with the other Apollo 11 memorabilia."

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