Union bashing for the new curriculum.

Union bashing for the new curriculum.

By Kaye Lee on March 18, 2014 • 

Senator Eric Abetz gave a rather disturbing speech to the Young Liberals (aged 16 to 31) national conference in Perth on 25 January this year.


He told them that, over the Christmas break, he had watched American political tv series House of Cards.


“Whilst it was a good watch, the moral bankruptcy, the crass manipulation, the cynicism, were for me all turn-offs.”


I know how he feels, though he apparently assured his son that
Canberra politics wasn’t quite as portrayed in House of Cards.  He also
assured him that:

“Congressman Frank Underwood engaged in all his unsavoury
intrigues in the House of Representatives, and that such things could
never happen in the Senate.  I also pointed out that the US Democrats
were the equivalent to Australia’s ALP”.

Right.  Did you also remind him, and your audience, that it was a
fictional tv show, or are you preparing them for the “we good them bad”
indoctrination where fiction will be accepted as fact?


Speaking of which, Senator Abetz also read a book by Hal Colebatch
called “Australia’s Secret War” which he described as “a thorough,
detailed exposition of how individual unions and their leaders acted to
sabotage our nation’s war efforts in World War II.”  He went on to say:

“Hal Colebatch has recalled this painful chapter of
Australian history which saw Australian unionists engage in a range of
sabotage actions that were utterly unconscionable.


That systematic campaign of sabotage criss-crossed the nation, from
Townsville to Fremantle, and cost the lives of countless Australian
diggers and allied soldiers.


Their actions included deliberately damaging planes, removing valves from radio transmitters that made them inoperative.


Packages and parcels for our service personnel were pilfered. 
Coalminers and munition factory workers went on strike prejudicing the
war effort, costing lives, leading to unnecessary loss and increasing
the length and cost of the war.


Australian women were needlessly widowed. Australian children were needlessly left fatherless.”

These are very damning accusations to make, but he doesn’t stop there.

 “So I do ask: where was the moral outrage of the ABC and
Fairfax commentariat when Hal Colebatch exposed all this in his
groundbreaking work?


People killed, people injured, the war effort severely compromised –
murder, grievous bodily harm and treason, all at the doorstep of the
union movement and all largely ignored.


Talk about a topic for inclusion in the national curriculum!”

And so it begins.  The history curriculum rewrite starts with a
union-bashing book published last October from “a secret history rescued
from ‘folk memory’ – and one previously suppressed by leftists.” 
Anyone who was 20 years old at the start of the war would now be about
95.  I’m not sure we should be basing the curriculum on their anecdotes.


Rowan Cahill points out that:

“Colebatch has form, as they say in the classics. He is
the third son of the short-term (one-month) twelfth premier of West
Australia, who accompanied strikebreakers onto the waterfront during the
bitter Fremantle wharf crisis of 1919, an inflammatory action which
contributed to the death of trade union loyalist Tom Edwards following a
police battoning.”

Needless to say, Alan Jones gave it his immediate ringing endorsement
and, when that other expert journalist, Miranda Devine, pre-reviewed
Colebatch’s book in November, a contributor to her blog posed the
question:

“Where is the media campaign pushing for the unions to
abase themselves and seek forgiveness for the very real harm they did to
Australians?  Unfortunately in Australia in 2013 that seems too much to
ask.”

Abetz echoes this cry saying:

 “The union movement must provide a national apology for
prejudicing the nation’s war effort, remembering those families who
needlessly lost loved ones because of their treasonous activities.


Instead the MUA is currently funding a hagiography about the refusal
by wharfies in 1938 to load pig iron destined for Japan – an incident
the Left is still milking for indignation.”

They apparently want the unions to say sorry for the actions of
people who, 76 years ago, refused to send iron to aid Japan’s gearing up
for war, but John Howard had nothing to say sorry for because the
Stolen Generation never existed?


The Senator then goes on to praise Cory Bernardi’s book and his
comments about non-traditional families.  He responded to the offence
taken by step-dad Bill Shorten this way:

You know the trip; “I claim victimhood.  I declare that I
have taken offence.  So you cannot question me or assail me with
undisputed, objective studies”… studies which actually tell us time and
time again that the gold standard for the nurturing of children is a
married man and woman with their biological children.

He gives a quote from Senator Bernardi’s book about the likelihood of
girls from non-traditional families ending up promiscuous and boys as
criminals.

“we know the statistics – that children who grow up
without a father are 5 times more likely to live in poverty and commit
crime;  9 times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more
likely to end up in prison.  They are more likely to have behavioural
problems, or run away from home, or become teenage parents themselves.
And the foundations of our community are weaker because of this.”

He claims the source of these statistics was President Barack Obama’s
Father’s Day address of 2008.  I know the Liberals would like us all to
emulate the Tea Party but thankfully, Australian society is still a lot
different to the US.  Medicare, the PBS, minimum wages, penalty rates,
all contribute to making life just a little easier for our low income
earners compared to their US counterparts.  Gangs don’t have the same
hold here (yet) and we have strict gun laws.  We do have problems with
housing affordability and youth unemployment but comparatively, our
safety net is better.


Abetz then sinks even lower in my mind by saying to the kids:

“So can I say to those who in turn might say they were
brought up by a single parent, or in a blended family, and turned out
okay, take pleasure in this, but ask, was it the ideal?


Would life have been even better if, all things being equal, you had
been brought up with your other biological parent coming home every
night to provide an even more nurturing environment?”

I wonder if anyone had the courage to stand up and say “It was better
than watching my father continually humiliated or seeing my mother get
hit or watching two desperately unhappy people drift ever further
apart”.  I wonder if anyone talked about the love and support their
adoptive parents gave them, something their “biological” parent/s were
unable to do.  How dare he make these children feel their lives were
less than “ideal” because of decisions made by others when he has no
knowledge of their circumstances.


Speaking of criticism from within his own party which dismissed Bernardi’s as a minority view, Senator Abetz said:

 “I have no doubt that for centuries it has been the
majority view and that only in the last thirty or so years has this view
come to be questioned by a number of social theorists, commentators and
interest groups.


I am delighted that reputable commentators like Piers Akerman, Andrew
Bolt and Paul Sheehan exposed the hollowness of many of the criticisms
of Senator Bernardi’s book.”

Because they would know better than “social theorists” I presume.


And of course, he couldn’t finish without reference to our Christian heritage:

 “A study by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences of
about 20 years ago to ascertain the reasons for the dominance of what we
refer to as our western civilisation concluded that


“in the past twenty years we have realised that the heart of your
culture is your religion, Christianity…  the Christian moral foundation
of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of
capitalism and then the transition to democratic politics.   We don’t
have any doubt about this”.


If communist academics from China can get it, I would’ve thought it
would be a no-brainer for say Senator Lee Rhiannon and the Greens, who
are pushing to remove reference to our Christian traditions by expunging
the Lord’s Prayer from Parliamentary proceedings.”

As he was concluding, I finally found myself surprisingly in agreement with Senator Abetz when he said:

“I believe that the Liberal Party too often has sold
itself short by over-concentrating on matters economic, vitally
important though they be – vacating the ground when it comes to our
society’s actual foundations.


As we restore our economic fortunes, let us also remember that to
succeed in that task we need to restore the societal capital, the values
and the foundations of our nation’s non-economic features. To ensure
the social legacy we leave future generations will determine the
economic foundations and structures that we also leave behind.


Australia’s economic security will ultimately be a reflection of its societal security.


Can I also encourage you, in your discussions with family, friends
and colleagues, to respectfully remind people that the future well-being
of our nation is not wrapped up in the economic management of our
nation, but ultimately in maintaining the social and cultural values and
traditions that have in fact given us the unparalleled personal
freedoms and wealth which makes us the envy of the world.”

It scares me when he says stuff like that.  What does he really mean?