What on earth is John Howard blathering about, and why?

John Howard says people who are HIV positive should not be allowed to migrate to Australia. Well, the fact is that already, according to the most complete database I could find (aidsnet.ch – the Swiss HIV/AIDS Documention Center online), Australia already asks all intending immigrants who are over 15 years old “to present an HIV test result with their application. It is unlikely that an immigration permit is granted to people presenting a positive test result.” However:

Radical thinking on education from the USA

Certainly education issues have dominated my blog lately. The Doctor Donnelly series attracted a comment yesterday from an old colleague, Ken Watson, possibly, from Dr D’s perspective, a bit like a comment from Beelzebub… 😉

Perhaps I should revert to less controversial topics, like religion: why, for example, the current Pope is rushing backwards to the Council of Trent. Or politics: why Tony Abbott is such a poor advertisement for Christian charity.

But education it is again today. Education Week (USA) emailed thus this morning:

Burke’s web hits business as cunning PM pulls the wings off St Kevin

I will cross-post this here and on Journalspace today. The headline combines a story from The Australian with one from the Sydney Morning Herald.

I am not at all surprised by the first story, as unfortunately Burke and his style and methods have characterised Australian politics for years. If this whole saga sickens people on that culture of mateship and power it will have done some good, but it is no use the Howard side of politics pretending their people have never been part of it.

SENIOR business figures, including close supporters of John Howard, have been dragged into the Brian Burke scandal after Health Minister Tony Abbott questioned the ethics of hiring the disgraced lobbyist.

…Mr Abbott yesterday scolded corporate Australia for helping rehabilitate the disgraced former premier. Mr Burke’s corporate clients have included Macquarie Bank and Fortescue Metals whose chief executive, Andrew Forrest, is a close friend of Mr Howard and who attended the 2005 dinner with Mr Rudd that has embroiled the Opposition Leader in the biggest furore of his leadership.

Asked on the Ten Network whether business had been morally compromised by employing Mr Burke, Mr Abbott replied: “I think that certainly they have questions to answer because of the modus operandi that this gentleman has consistently been using.”

Extreme prejudice… 1

Let he that is without sin, etc…

Last weekend I saw Tony Abbott’s attack on Kevin Rudd’s version of Christianity as a stand-up comic routine. In today’s Sydney Morning Herald Tony continues to reveal that his version of Christianity is a question of cheerleading for one line of thought. He also confesses, interesting for us oldies, that the true heir of B A Santamaria is Tony Abbott and the current Liberal Party — except for Santa’s sentimental belief in trade unions. That admission would once have sunk them without trace, wouldn’t it?

On not being complacent about AIDS

Today the Australian government has reacted to an overall rise of new HIV cases in Australia between 2000 and 2005 with a proposed new advertising campaign to get the safe sex message out there again.

NATASHA SIMPSON: It’s yet to be decided what form the campaign would take, but Don Baxter from the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations, has a clear idea of how it should be designed to ensure maximum impact.

Is applying the Quadrant view the answer to the Aboriginal dilemma?

It cannot be denied there are tragic problems in some remote Aboriginal communities, and on that I commend Lateline to all but you really should read The National Indigenous Times as well, especially Wadeye: The truth of the matter.

But is the answer a new paternalism, as Tony Abbott claims? Well, his ideas do deserve to be looked at, but — and here I think I am actually being conservative in the proper sense — I think it is also a fact that we have seen a failure too of the superficially hard-nosed approach of “practical reconciliation”.

It seems to me that Paul Keating’s 1992 Redfern Speech is as relevant, true and seminal today as it was the day it was spoken, when it broke new ground in the reconciliation process. If the present government had not turned its back on the absolutely necessary symbolic actions that speech exemplified and foreshadowed they might be in a better position today to handle the problems of dysfunctional communities with integrity and honour. But that was not to be.