No penalty for black pedophile

Young black girls are less deserving of protection than are white girls, apparently

A MAN who "married" a 13-year-old girl and got her pregnant has escaped jail after pleading guilty to having sex with a child under 16. The Northern Territory Supreme Court heard the man was 23 when he married the girl, "in the Aboriginal sense" in a remote community, the Northern Territory News reports.

The relationship only came to light when the girl gave birth and a subsequent DNA test proved he was the baby's father.

Chief Justice Trevor Riley told the man that the court would be "blind to reality" if he did not impose a penalty which allowed him to return to his wife, who is now 17.

Chief Justice Riley sentenced him in the Alice Springs sittings of the Supreme Court to nine months in jail suspending it immediately. The maximum sentence for having sex with an underage person is 16 years in prison.

Upon sentencing the man Chief Justice Riley said it was "not a case of an older predator taking advantage of a young girl". "You are in a relationship with her. The relationship existed before the birth of the child and continues until today."

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Hypocritical South African becomes a professor

He was a great critic of apartheid in its time but when he got his wish and South Africa became black-ruled, he decided he didn't want to live there anymore.

NOBEL laureate and author J.M. Coetzee is now a Professor of Literature at the University of Adelaide. The South African writer of acclaimed novels such as the Booker Prize winners Life & Times of Michael K and Disgrace, will provide mentoring and oversee students' work in the University's School of Humanities.

Professor Mike Brooks, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research), yesterday confirmed Prof Coetzee's appointment as Professor of Literature in the Discipline of English.

He said the appointment "reinforced and extended" their relationship with Prof Coetzee who joined the University as a Visiting Research Fellow in 2003 and was awarded an honorary doctorate for his contribution to literature in 2006. "We are absolutely delighted and honoured that Prof Coetzee is continuing his association with the university as a staff member," he said. "To have the talent of someone of his world-class standing on faculty here in Adelaide is a privilege."

Prof Coetzee, who retired to Adelaide in 2002, published his first book, Dusklands, in South Africa in 1974. Others include: Waiting for the Barbarians, Foe, Age of Iron, The Master of Petersburg and three fictionalised memoirs, Boyhood, Youth and Summertime. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2003.

"The university is proud to have been associated with five Nobel laureates in its history, each representing the very pinnacle of international achievement in the fields of medicine, literature and physics," Prof Brooks said.

As well as the University of Adelaide, Prof Coetzee has taught in institutions all over the United States including the State University of New York, Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago.

The 71-year-old, who is renowned for shunning publicity, said in a rare interview in 2003 published by Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter: "That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame - you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world," he said.

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"Childcare" now a bad word (!)

THE term "childcare" should be cut from job descriptions and names of government departments, an early childhood advocacy group says.

Pam Cahir, the chief executive of Early Childhood Australia, says it should be replaced by the phrase "early childhood education and care" in order to recognise the sector's importance.

Childcare representatives are split over the push. One group says it's political correctness "gone mad". But the union representing early childhood workers supports a change, saying it would show staff were more than just "babysitters".

In a report on early childhood reforms, Our Future On The Line, Ms Cahir says governments should lead the way in changing the sector's language. "I want to bring an end to 'childcare' and call it what it is, early childhood education and care," Ms Cahir said.

"A change as subtle as 'disabled' to 'people living with disabilities' opens up huge potential and empowers people.

"In the same way, the early childhood education and care sector needs to be recognised for the quality education, nurturing and care it gives to children."

Child Care National Association president Chris Buck said families wanted affordable care, not political correctness "gone mad". He said the focus should be on rewarding staff, and training more, rather than on paying for new letterheads. "The thought police have had a brain snap," Mr Buck said. "Stop wasting money."

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Julia's true faith -- if any

Peter Costello

An anti-carbon tax rally in Sydney shows some of the feelings about Prime Minister Julia Gillard. Photo: Adam Hollingworth
Fresh back from the United States where she announced her undying love for America, the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, let us in on a secret no one could have guessed. She is an old-fashioned traditionalist.

In an interview for Australian Agenda on Sky News, Gillard declared she opposed euthanasia, opposed gay marriage, and wanted people to study the Bible. She doesn't sound too different from Tony Abbott. He is a one-time Catholic seminarian - now married with children - who deeply opposes euthanasia and abortion. She is an atheist who keeps her unmarried partner in the Lodge. But when it comes to traditional family values Gillard wants you to know they are Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

I sat opposite Gillard for a decade in the House of Representatives and it never occurred to me - not for a minute - that she was a moral conservative. But she was . . . or is.

Why has she done this now? Well it turns out that Labor research shows the government is suffering in the polls because people think it gets its marching orders from the Greens and Bob Brown. They think it is pandering to a group with some pretty far-out demands they didn't vote for - like a new tax on carbon dioxide designed to increase electricity and petrol prices.

So Labor and Gillard want to show they are more mainstream than the Greens. As Gillard put it: "To our right we have the Liberal Party . . . climate change deniers . . . To our left we have the Greens." So what do you get when you cross Tony Abbott and Bob Brown? You get Julia Gillard as their political love child.

We all know in the genetic lottery of life, offspring cannot choose which characteristics they derive from which parent. If Julia had taken Bob's moral views with Tony's environmental policy, she could dump the new tax while maintaining a more liberal position on gay marriage and the like. That seems to be the way the faceless men, Labor right-wing powerbrokers like Mark Arbib, want her to go. But you can't pick your moral beliefs, can you? Moral convictions do not turn on the spin of political convenience.

The last Labor leader who paraded on morality was Kevin Rudd. He championed an emissions trading system as the great moral issue of the age. When it looked like being the death of him Gillard advised him to drop it, which he did, shortly before it was the death of him. At that stage Gillard was not so committed to saving the world from carbon dioxide. And during the election she did all that she could to reassure people she was no fanatic, declaring last August: "There will be no carbon tax under the government I lead."

But that was then. She now wants a carbon tax as a step along the road to an emissions trading system: the very system she urged Rudd to drop. She has found faith, the environmental faith. In an evil world burning fossil fuel a great warming catastrophe awaits us (as hot as the fires of hell itself) which can only be averted through repentance, and the good works of an emissions trading scheme. This is a faith that needs no god. It is a faith for progressive atheists and Christians alike.

So the Gillard of 2011 is right now where the Rudd of 2010 was. I'll tell you someone who has noticed: Rudd himself. He popped up last week to remind everyone that when he was suffering for the (environmental) faith Gillard was dumping it. He wants people to know that he does not chop and change. He is principled.

If you listened to Rudd you might think Gillard is not so sincere about her views, that perhaps even her newly disclosed belief in traditional family values is just political positioning. I'll concede that politicians do change their mind and change their policies. But usually they are firm in their convictions on moral issues. That's why the parties give them a conscience vote. It's too much to expect MPs to bend positions of conscience to the will of the party line. People could get very cynical if they thought their leaders chop and change these values for a passing political advantage.

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