Sperm donors to ban Muslims, lesbians?

Why is discrimination bigotry? We ALL practice discrimination in our personal life. Women tend to choose tall men and men tend to choose busty women, for instance. Hence boob jobs for women and Filipina brides for short men. And what is more personal than your offspring? More practically, I believe that there is a shortage of sperm donors -- hence the new legislation -- as men are scared away by possible legal obligations to offspring (Obligations that have in fact been imposed by courts in Sweden). So giving donors the right to express personal preferences should encourage more of them to come forward

A BIZARRE row is set to erupt over claims that reproductive donors will be given the right to direct their sperm or eggs not go to certain groups such as Muslims, Jews, single mothers or lesbians. Critics believe the Iemma Government's Assisted Reproductive Technology Bill allows sperm and egg donors to specifically discriminate against ethnic, religious and other minorities.

The Bill, due to be debated in the NSW Legislative Council, is primarily aimed at allowing donor-conceived children to access information about the donor parent when they turn 18.

But Greens MP John Kaye said yesterday there was widespread concern the Bill, as currently drafted, allowed donors to nominate classes of people to whom their sperm or eggs may not be given. "While the Bill contains a number of positive features, it is simply unacceptable to enshrine discrimination into the law," Mr Kaye said. "Granting legal sanction to bigotry and prejudice sends an appalling message that it is acceptable to discriminate on grounds that are irrelevant."

Under the Bill, the names of donors in NSW will be recorded on a compulsory central register to guarantee they can be found by their offspring. But Health Minister Reba Meagher has said the legislation will not oblige donors to have contact with their offspring or make them legally or financially responsible for the children.

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Rudd: Is the mask slipping already?

By Andrew Bolt

NOW that Kevin Rudd has won the election, Peter Garrett's quip that Labor will change its me-too promises may be coming true. The phoney election is over. Only the dumb or desperate Liberals ever thought Labor would lose. Now for the real election. Which "Kevin Rudd" will we get as Prime Minister: the conservative, or the Left's pet muppet?

Right now there's one "Kevin Rudd" looking tough, but there's another "Kevin Rudd" talking mush. So the answer hangs in the balance, although I fear it's already tipping to the kind of faddish symbolism that gets black children hurt.

Oh, I know, you'll think I'm just choking on sour grapes. But no. It's actually the triumphant Left that most wants to know if Rudd really is the me-too conservative he claimed he was before the election. To be blunt, they're hoping he was just fooling you and will now leap out of the closet dressed in red, or at least the pink of a nice Laurent Perrier Rose. They are hoping, in short, that Labor's environment spokesman, Peter Garrett, spoke the truth when he quipped that Labor's me-too promises didn't matter, because "once we get in we'll just change it all".

You doubt such moralising folk could be so cynical? Then hear it from Leftist journalists, who screamed loudest that Howard was a liar but now pray that Rudd is one, too. Hear it, for instance, from David Marr, the Sydney Morning Herald journalist and writers' festival darling, who joined Labor party workers at Rudd's victory bash and said: "Many frankly hope Peter Garrett was right: that despite all the non-promises of the campaign, something is going to happen in Australia now. Their leader seems a mystery to them." Count Marr among those hopers, left flat by Rudd's post-victory press conference: "It was a performance so passionless, so grey that it raises the terrible possibility that our new leader is not channelling John Howard but Philip Ruddock . . ."

Indeed, The Sunday Age is demanding Rudd be the radical he promised he wasn't. "Cast off Me Too," it urged him the day after his win. "The truth is many, if not most of us, voted against the other bloke -- it really was time -- and not actually for you. And many of your voters hope Peter Garrett was right; we'll see the real Rudd and ALP now that you have the keys to The Lodge."

Will Rudd oblige, and reveal his inner Whitlam? From the pictures and TV footage, you'd assume no: conservative Rudd will stand firm. Already he's dropped the vote-for-me grin and adopted the I'm-the-boss frown, as he tries to assert himself as head of a government whose members are mostly well to his Left, from what we'd guess of Rudd's beliefs. He's even ordered all Labor politicians to visit two schools this week to get in touch, which should make them feel as patronised as the poor students they're about to bore.

Indeed, I'm sure Rudd would like to do the Bob Hawke consensus thing, and govern, as he said on Saturday, "for all Australians" -- which means governing from the centre, where the next election must be won. Yet listen carefully. Hear the first sounds of Rudd doing a Garrett? I don't count Rudd's boast that he'll sign the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gases within days. He promised that futile gesture in the campaign, after all, and how well it's worked. US satellites now say 2007 is likely to be the coolest year since 1983. Saved by Rudd!

No, it's the other bones Rudd is tossing to the Left, now voters can't complain to anyone about the mess. Here's one: before the election, Rudd was so keen to seem conservative that he supported -- and voted for -- the Howard government's intervention in troubled Aboriginal settlements in the Northern Territory. That meant backing such moves as checking children's health, sending in more police, opening Aboriginal towns to visitors, banning booze traffickers, and making sure welfare payments went on food for children.

During the campaign, Rudd was asked if he'd change what had been done. His answer: "We don't intend to roll it back at all. Therefore when I say that we will be implementing and backing the intervention, it is as I have described before, and that is without qualification." But that was before the election. Here is Rudd now, as reported in The Australian: "The incoming prime minister said through a spokesman he was open to altering John Howard's unprecedented intervention. These include reintroducing the controversial permit system, which regulates non-indigenous access to communities, and modifying rather than scrapping the Community Development Employment Projects work-for-the-dole scheme."

Here's another example of a Garrett: Just days before the election, Rudd was asked six times by 3AW's Neil Mitchell if he'd say "sorry" to Aborigines as Prime Minister. Rudd, still playing at being conservative, tried every which way to avoid promising that "s" word.... But that was then, when voters still had a choice, and this is now. Which is why, just two days after the election, you read this in the papers: "Prime Minister-elect Kevin Rudd says that his government will make a formal apology to indigenous Australians early in its first term. "His deputy, Julia Gillard, made the same pledge earlier in the day, saying it was Labor policy to say 'sorry'." Suddenly "sorry" wasn't so hard to say, after all, at least not for Gillard, the Left's spearhead, even if Rudd yesterday was still choking on it, promising nothing but more talks.

Cross? Well, Garrett did warn you: "When we get in, we'll just change it all." But who will complain? Not journalists like Marr. Not The Sunday Age. Not the Liberals, desperate not to seem nasty any more. Not the many Australians who think a symbolic gesture like a sorry can't hurt, and will at least prove we have good hearts. Yet there is a price to pay, and it will be paid by the very weakest. Here's an item from Marr's own paper last week:

Aboriginal social workers in Brewarrina say the indigenous community there is confused and fearful after the attempted removal of four children from their families last week, which sent two of them into hiding. Grace Beetson, who runs the Ourgunya women's refuge, described scenes reminiscent of the film Rabbit-Proof Fence when Department of Community Services workers and police arrived at the children's house to take four of them into care on Thursday . . . But the department said the two babies were taken into care amid serious fears for their safety and that department case workers were thrust into a scene of escalating violence and personal risk when attending the premises.

I'll say it again: the "stolen generations" myth is killing black children. Rabbit-Proof Fence was a film which rewrote history, so that the peaceful removal to a boarding school of a half-caste bush girl who had been abandoned by her father, rejected by her tribe and apparently preyed upon by white men, was portrayed instead as the violent stealing of a loved daughter from a Garden of Eden. Nor has this been the only lie told. Students read in their Jacaranda school histories that "more than 100,000" Aboriginal children were stolen simply for racist reasons, even though the top "stolen generations" propagandist, Prof Robert Manne, cannot name me even 10.

The result? Child protection workers are now often too scared to remove black children from dangers they'd never tolerate for white ones. As Labor's national president, Warren Mundine, says: "They are in a no-win situation -- if they take the child's view, they are accused of being stolen-generation cultural, genocidal pigs, and then if they leave the kids in the (risky) situation, they are blamed for the dreadful and horrific outcomes." Think of the children who have died or suffered terribly for this myth. Here's just one of the many news reports I've collected:

An Aboriginal baby who died lying on a filthy mattress between her passed-out mother and father could be alive today if Western Australia's Department of Community Development had intervened to take her away from her alcoholic parents . . . The Coroner . . . said it was particularly alarming that there was a reluctance by DCD to intervene to save Aboriginal children at risk.

Here's another, from Victoria:

A violent man who inflicted horrific injuries on his toddler nephew was given custody despite fears expressed by childcare workers that he posed a danger . . . But court documents claim the magistrate ruled (Aboriginal) cultural identity a priority.

Myths have consequences. And here is Kevin Rudd's first test. Is he of the Left, more concerned with seeming good than achieving it? Then he'll say his "sorry" to the stolen generations that never were, and sabotage the intervention that is trying to save black children from cultures gone rancid. Or is he truly a conservative, more concerned with getting good results than flaunting good intentions? We'll find out sooner than I suspected, and I do hope Marr will be disappointed -- not least because blacks' lives really are more important than white lies.

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Pom discovers Oz kulcha

Graham Boynton finds high art in Australia. Many Poms have deluded views of Australia. They mistake bluntness for stupidity -- just as we often fail to see that the point of British hypocrisy is usually concern for other people's feelings

Australia is a country of culture, style and taste. There, I've said it. Sport-obsessed, brash, uncouth, belligerent and teeming with larrikins it may also be but, as I discovered on my fifth visit to the Lucky Country, there is a more civilised side to a place that is usually more closely associated with the rough and ready aspects of 20th-century frontier societies.

In Sydney I found an Irishman - Fergus Linehan, the artistic director and chief executive of the Sydney Festival - to confirm my views, and a good 10 days later in Adelaide I discovered a valley full of cultivated winemakers to drive the point home. In between, visits to the theatre, to a string of outstanding restaurants serving memorable fusion cuisine, and to the country outfitter RM Williams, followed by a few days just wandering around one of the most pleasant cities on the planet (Adelaide) finally convinced me that my previous misgivings about Australia had been unfounded. I am now persuaded that as the 21st century progresses the Lucky Country will become increasingly alluring not only as a tourist destination but also as a place to live.

The sobriquet Lucky Country was meant ironically and as an indictment of 1960s Australia. It was the title of Donald Horne's 1964 book and was taken from the opening sentence of the final chapter: "Australia is a lucky country run by second-rate people who shared its luck." Horne maintained that the country's economic prosperity was derived from its natural resources rather than the intelligence of its inhabitants and that Australia "showed less enterprise than almost any other prosperous industrial society". Forty years later Horne wrote an article in The Age, a Melbourne newspaper, arguing that although things had changed for the better the jury was still out.

Fergus Linehan, who was brought to Sydney on a three-year contract to run the annual showcase of dance, theatre, opera, popular music and visual arts, says there is nothing wrong with the intelligence of modern Australians. He cites as an example the thriving creative arts scene and says that whereas in the past the big cultural festivals were all about British philharmonic orchestras and national ballet companies "going out to the colonies to keep them civilised" they now have a healthy combination of international and indigenous talent that performs to tens of thousands of enthusiasts

Nobody's pretending that this is fine arts central, but Linehan - who comes from what he describes as "that autumnal, literary city of Dublin" - says that the right mixture of high art and popular culture has been embraced by Sydney's population: Ralph Fiennes performing the Samuel Beckett novella First Love, Lou Reed's Berlin, Rosanne Cash, the Maly Drama Theatre of St Petersburg performing Chekhov, acrobats, jugglers, children's theatre. "It is a hedonistic paradise," he says. "January, when the festival is on, is like August in France: beach in the morning, lunch theatre, concert party. Just a great time. And Aussie crowds are very well behaved - socially responsible and well behaved. It's an orderly place, a prosperous, egalitarian community."

Linehan directs me to the satirical musical Keating!, which is playing at the Belvoir Street Theatre, as an example of great indigenous creative arts. That night I go with an old friend who has lived here for years and, with her acting as a simultaneous translator, I get the satirical nuances. Even without the nuances it is a splendid piece of comedy theatre and as I write this the thought of the foreign minister, Alexander Downer, in bustier and fishnet stockings, looking like a cross between Billy Bunter and the Rocky Horror Show's Frank'n'Furter, makes me laugh out loud.

Then there is the boom in Aussie sartorial chic, formerly rudimentary attire that was made locally for a small clientele of cattlemen, surfers and farmers, but now internationally famous and very cool because it has been endorsed by such celebrities as Bill Clinton and Daryl Hannah. For example, Uggs or Ughs were once cheap, simply constructed sheepskin boots, made to keep the feet of South Australian surfers warm after a day in the cold Southern Ocean - the company logo of Pacific Sheepskins, which starting making the original Uggs in the early 1970s, is a sheep on a surfboard. Then one day Daryl Hannah walked into the Sheepskin Shop in the Rocks and out with a pair of Uggs at the end of her very long legs, and suddenly every young woman east of Hollywood Boulevard wanted to be seen in them.....

All of this is not to say that Australia's - and Australians' - essential qualities of earthiness and of being a bit rough around the edges have evaporated in a cloud of cultural perfume. As one friend said as I was waxing lyrical about style and taste, "the culture is based on metaphysics - if you really want to get belted in an Aussie pub, walk in quoting Keats and Plato." And that flinty, laddish humour remains.

During last year's Ashes, I was watching Australia applying the ritual stuffing to our hapless English cricketers and turned to a group of Aussies sitting behind me. I asked them if they thought their team was going to win the series. "Win?" came the genuinely astonished reply. "Win? Mate we're going to s*** in because for us an ordinary win is little better than a draw."

So, with all this newly acquired cultural and sartorial baggage on board it is appropriate that I decide to spend my last few days of this cultural odyssey in what some Australians call - without irony - "the Renaissance Capital of the Southern Hemisphere", the lovely city of Adelaide. It is, like its spiritual sister city Cape Town, physically pretty, on the coast and at the centre of a booming wine industry.

Viticulture attracts gastronomy and gourmands tend to be civilised, so if you are looking for cultured Australia planted in an architecturally pleasing city with a generous green belt of parks, golf courses and botanical gardens, this one really fits the bill. In between long sessions of glorious cricket at the most beautiful Test match ground in the world I find myself walking the parks, strolling around Victorian buildings and catching the tram to and from Glenelg, the seaside resort that is Adelaide-by-the-Sea. Had I discovered this place 20 years ago I'd have emigrated.

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Australia ranked world's third most livable nation

Ratings such as this are highly arbitrary. They are interesting only if you agree with the critieria used. The criteria behind this one seem reasonably down to earth. Silly old Donald Horne got one thing right when he called Australia the lucky country. Though Australia's easy life has more to do with the hard work and good sense of our forebears than luck. Still, we are lucky that they generally were people of such good attributes

AUSTRALIA is the third most desirable country to live in, according to an annual United Nations report that looks at wealth, life expectancy and educational levels. Australia came in behind top-ranking Iceland and Norway in second spot. The top three nations have not changed since last year's report, when Australia was again third but Norway was on top and Iceland second. AIDS-afflicted sub-Saharan African states occupied the lowest rankings of the UN Human Development Index. As expected, rich free-market countries dominate the top places. Behind Iceland, Norway and Australia come Canada and Ireland. But the US has slipped to 12th, from eighth last year."

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