Take solace: It could be worse!

WHAT WOMEN WANT (AUSTRALIA)

What Women Want (Australia) is the only political party dedicated to advancing issues affecting Australian women. We want our parliaments to be more representative. We believe that the male domination of politics limits and negatively impacts on decisions and policies. What Women Want (Australia) will dedicate its work to giving women more of a say in the direction of our country and the important policies that shape it. The work of What Women Want (Australia) will not exclude men, as we know that they play an important role in many women’s lives.

What Women Want (Australia) simply wants to promote greater participation from women of all ages. We believe that everyone in our society will benefit from that.

Decisions and policies made by government affect women’s health and well-being. They also affect the lives of others, particularly that of their partners and children. We believe that with more women in Parliament these decisions would be more ‘woman and family friendly’. Policies would have the ‘stamp of practicality’ from women who are ‘walking the talk’. Women who understood how hard it is to juggle work and family and how good it is when as a woman you are supported.

And that's just the blurb on the front of their web page! That picture is there too.

It's called: "Three women jumping at the dawn and holding their arms in the air".

No, really, I haven't made any of this up. I vaguely heard about these clowns before the election and sure enough when I saw them on the ballot paper I put their candidates 64th and 65th out of 65. This was just after the socialists who came in around the 63rd position. There may have been some other party that was intent on replacing the national anthem with an Elvis song and declaring war on fear that I put higher than those two parties. Not surprisingly, the Australian people did not give the kooks too much support either. Even though (apparently) it's "what women want", according to their website.

How serious a problem does your persecution complex have to be to seriously believe that government should do MORE for women. They are correct, no other party dedicates themselves to advancing issues affecting Australian women. There's a good reason for that, well two if you want to be facetious.

1. The government of Australia governs for all Australians, therefore any issue affecting Australia that the government deals with are issues affecting Australian women.

2. The only issues that are ALLOWED to be advanced are those specifically dealing with the advancement of women!!!

I mean, for god's sake there's an Office for the Status of Women in Australia! While I could write a few pages on how stupid, sexist, callous and supremicist just the introduction to these witches' website is, my intention is to have a look at the lighter side. With that in mind, let's have a look at their policies.

What Women Want(Australia) supports Medicare. We will push for a further opening of Medicare services including:
Dental services
Midwifery
Physiotheraphy
Complementary and natural therapies

Increasing and Diversifying the Health Workforce

There is an impending crisis in the health workforce. The average age of nurses is 49 years and there are workforce shortages in all of the health professions. We cannot continue to import our medical and allied health workforce.
What Women Want will increase the number of university places for medical, nursing, dental and allied health students, further...

Health Funding

What Women Want will abolish the private health insurance subsidy, which has not worked, and spend this $3 billion per annum on increasing the health workforce and the extension of medicare into the primary health areas mentioned above.

The primary health care program which provides for GP referral psychological counselling sessions will be expanded to include social workers as eligible practitioners.

So far, the health plan is redeem three billion dollars, previously used to help people buy private health insurance (meaning how many extra poeple will end up on the already-strained public system?) and spend it on an ever-widening array of health practitioners. Including SOCIAL WORKERS. Phew! Good plan so far, moving on...

A Woman’s Right to Choose

What Women Want will ensure that all women have access to legal, free, and safe pregnancy termination services which includes unbiased pre and post termination counselling.

Of course. Well there's another expense we would need to fund somehow. This is pretty much more of the same as current policy though, the only change is that it's completely free. I wonder if I'll find a "men's right to choose" section...

Position Statement

Women must have the right to choose whether to continue with an unwanted pregnancy.

Many abortions could be prevented with stronger social policy initiatives. It is easy to demonise women for choosing abortion. It is far more difficult to take steps to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. The reasons women terminate pregnancies are often social. Women simply feel unable to care for a child when they are alone or in a relationship with real challenges, be they financial or social, such as substance abuse or domestic violence.

Interesting. Apart from the reasons listed for having an abortion being somewhere between misleading and a flight of fantasy, what I find interesting here is that while abortions should be freely available...we should try to avoid them. Accordingly we need strong social policies to turn unwanted pregnancies into "wanted pregnancies":

We challenge governments to prevent pregnancies from becoming unwanted with strong social policy programs and social welfare that enables women, if necessary, to support a child alone.

Wouldn't the logical social policy objective be to avoid unwanted pregnancies in the first place, thus reducing the need for abortions?

That is, IF we want to reduce the number of abortions. Because they're bad. I think. But irresponsible women (and their arguably equally irresponsible partners) should have as many free abortions as they like, paid for by all taxpayers. Should women have free breast implants too? They're good for your psychological health, after all...

But remember: giving a subsidy to help people afford private health care is wrong.

Well there's a cohesive plan for healthcare....

Oh. my. god.

I had a look at the section on violence against women. It's outrageous, which is to say, exactly what previous governments have been going on about. It's meticulously footnoted with statistics from the OFFICE OF THE STATUS OF WOMEN (nothing like impartiality there. No really, there's nothing like impartiality there!) and, in typical feminist fashion calls for more and more funding (more jobs for the girls!) and "improvements" to the criminal justice system (more men in jail!).

That's not going to do anything positive for my blood pressure, so I'm just going to move on!

Position Statement

We support the development of innovative, consumer-driven programs to complement traditional mental health services. People with a mental illness are entitled to be able to access support and treatment services. Regional services, in particular, need to be extended. There needs to be a real focus on prevention and early intervention rather than only treating people when they are seriously ill.

Honestly, do I need to make a joke about the women's party being closely correlated with mental health problems?

More calls for early intervention. Women's innate desire for safety and security seriously handicaps their reason, doesn't it? Why is it they wish to break free from the shackles of their evil husbands and cosy up to the shackles of the state?

Well, I wanted to have a look at these birds for a laugh. But it's kinda like a black man checking out the Ku Klux Klan (where a lot of early feminists came from - coincidence?) site for a chuckle.

I'm not laughing as much as I'd hoped. Unfortunately I'm not taking much consolation in the fact that offering women up as superior does not get votes, because the same noxious attitudes and blind belief systems will be hard at work through the office of the status of women and the other machinations of government anyway.

The Beginning

Well, it's 12:09am local time and I have finally been moved to add my two cents to the blogosphere, officially.


To put things in persective, I have just had a few too many beers and watched the stewardship of my great country, Australia, be passed from one political party to another.


Those who already know me as 'Destrier' from my posts at Cool Tools For Men may know something of my cynisism for contemporary politics. I have the vague suspicion that the representatives of both major parties have been thoroughly pre-selected before we get the privilege of choosing our destruction, in a similar fashion that Zool gave the Ghostbusters.


However, despite the lack of a gap between and the increasing irrelevance of the left/right paradigm, this time there was, to me, a dog's balls, stand-out difference between the two front-runners.


A little while ago, it made the news that the previous Prime Minister, Mr John Howard, took offence when a media lackey referred to Janette Howard as his 'partner'. He corrected said lackey and informed him that Janette was, in fact, his wife. This was newsworthy in our society.


Our New PM accepted his stewardship of the nation a few short hours ago. He had his family onstage with him as he did so. As he gave thanks to those supporting him and promised to deliver a positive future for the country, I started to change my mind, which was previously most certainly made-up against him. It was an excellent speech (no doubt written by professionals, with his approval) and it moved me that he delivered it so sincerely. I started to hope that the future may not be as bleak as I had invisaged it with him being victorious. And then he said it. He thanked his "life-partner".


His "life-partner".


Not his wife.


Not the woman who shares his name.


Because she doesn't.


She doesn't share his name...but I'm supposed to share his vision for the future of my country.


She allegedly loves him and bore his children...but won't take his name as his wife. How much should those of us aren't allegedly in love with him respect and trust him?


Hmmm!


The media that makes a big deal over a PM who insists that his wife be referred to as his wife does not even twitch when Comrade PM refers to his wife as his "life partner".


That's not news, apparently.


I guess it's just "politically correct".


For those who think I am splitting hairs, I will start to flesh out my concerns now. For those conservatives and others who basically subscribe to the dictates of common sense, please just bear with me.


For the radical lesbian feminists, the spice-girls-girl-power-neo-morons and secular-humanist-green-hippie-love-druggos I will say that focussing on this point is not an irrelavence.


You see, this was a political contest in which one USA/NWO/pro-illegal war bum-licking PM went balding head to waxy head with another USA/NWO/pro-illegal war bum-licking wannabe. The "new guy" (as far as I could tell...and I'm open to correction) had very little to offer other than more of the same as the old government, except with the added bonus of an "under new management" sign.


Kevin Rudd was dubbed by the media as "Howard light". This makes sense to me. I understand (I think) where "K Rudd" was coming from. Basically this election was his to lose, as the previous government has been in power "since forever" and has really started to stretch the friendship with the average Aussie worker. It was on this issue that election mainly turned. On everything else K Rudd said nothing. This was in the interests of political victory.


That's what seriously disturbs me, in conjunction with a number of recent events and historical precedents.

1. K Rudd was the ambassador (or part of the Australian diplomatic mission) to China and speaks Mandarin. He lived in that country (I assume) for at least two years. During the election campaign he addressed the people of China through the media, speaking in Mandarin.

Has he said anything about human rights abuses in China? No. Is anyone in contemporary politics in a better position to highlight the differences in values between the Australian people (who he has been elected to represent) and the policies of the Chinese government than him? In this blogger's honest opinion - No! Accordingly, his silence speaks chilling volumes to me.


2. The labour-union and socialist/marxist/communist leanings of his party. This is a grave concern for all Australians as the ideological underpinnings of his immediate supporters mean the weakening of the outstanding financial position the previous government has put the country in. It is also a push in the direction of communist totalitarianism (and yes, I'm aware that the alternative may well be a push in the ditrection of fascist authoritarianism).


3. The recent furore over his millionaire life-partner's issues with screwing over her workers. Isn't this a direct contradiction with his "worker's party" identity?


4. The historical precedent set by other Labour governments for leading us into political correctness and debt.


5. The promise of an "education revolution", delivered with a smile that would make Comrade Pol Pot proud.


(Australia now has the humiliating distinction, under a conservative government, of being the first country to outlaw Santa Claus from bellowing out his trademark, hearty "Ho ho ho". My god, that might offend a scantily-clad African-American woman, but where I come from "Ho" is what Santa says when he laughs or it's a gardening tool! In a country of 20-odd million Aussies, who by the looks of it are roughly 50% refugees from Vietnam, Lebanon and Sudan and 50% decendants of Scottish and Irish convicts with the odd Aborigine thrown into the mix, I really can't see the pressing need to restrict Santa's freedom of speech in the interests of preserving the "right to not be offended" for scantily-clad African-American lasses who can't corectly pronounce the word 'whore'!!!!)


There's no mention of how he intends to brainwash the next generation, just a Pol Pot smug smile and a promise of big changes. More chills down my spine.


6. The historical fact that a Labour government = financial ruin for the nation! Why has everyone forgotten this!?!


7. The fact that the new Deputy PM, Julia Gillard, is a Lawyer/Spinster AND the fact that as soon as the Australian public recoiled from her in horror, the Labour Party immediately started to make the election all about K Rudd instead of the "Dream Team" of K Rudd and Mzzz Gillard, as they were originally billed. But Girl-Power-Equal-Opportunity-Affirmitive-Action-Positive-Discrimination-More-Must-Be-Done-For-Girls-Gillard is still there, ladies and gentlemen, even if the party had the nouse to hide her from view. I wonder what she brings to the "education revolution", in a country where two-thirds of university students are female. Heaven help us all.


Yes, I do mean us all! All those smug females reading right now should broaden their horizons and have a look at the British medical system. Now THERE is a society that has been proper-fucked by feminism! With the vast majority of medical students and graduates being female they are stuck with a medical profession obsessed with the "self". Self-fulfilment, "career", "work-life balance" and any number of Oprah-esque platitudes that mean something other than "work and slave to get ahead to make a good life for myself and provide for a family" as men have done for generations.


Who cares?


Women care!


Why?


Because women are the ones who seek medical attention far more than men.


I'm not going into why, because I'm not sure. Are they naturally hypochondriacs? Are they naturally physically defective? Do they have more care for self-preservation than men? I don't know. I'm honestly not very interested. The female cult of doctor-worship does interest me, but should be the topic of another rant.


Anyway, that means that in the UK, it's the women that are suffering most because of the female-friendly girl-power policies that deliberately curtail boys' educational development, because they can't find a doctor because they're all on maternity leave, stress leave, "career breaks", working part-time or have decided to pack it in (having proved they could "make it in a man's world") and retired, making their position in medical school pointless for society at large.


As it always has been, men create and sustain civilisation for women. When women start cutting down men, under the guise of standing for women's rights or opportunities, all they do is damage the supports underneath them. Having seen the leftist policies of Labour politicians in the past, I can only expect more from the gender-neutral PM and Deputy PM.


I subscribe to no "ism", not even libertarianism (which probably comes closest to aligning with my views).


I hope I am wrong, because I love my country. But I have been moved to start a blog, sparked by tonight's election results, because I fear the worst.


I will write more and I will monitor the new government for the next three years while it is in office. I will be busy in that time, but I will post my thoughts as often as possible.


I wish that men can be men (and not go to prison) and women can be women (and not be ridiculed for being "weak").


Advance Australia Fair.



But Don't Tread On Me.