Doug PollardSheep among the wolves
The changes to the equal opportunity laws that fell over in parliament this week Really Long Link are really about giving so-called "faith-based" organisations special privileges over the rest of us
Not just to reject or sack workers whose 'lifestyle' they disapprove of, but also to deny services to those same people. Us/
Religious-run counselling services, aged-care homes, schools, hospitals, clinics (and even breakfast cereal manufacturer Sanitarium) will be able to refuse to help gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people, same-sex couples, single mothers, members of other faiths, and what's worse, their children, as exemplified in a letter the Age published yesterday about a Catholic school turning away children from an 'unsuitable' family ('Choice is Spurious' Really Long Link ).
That's bad enough, but as more and more government services are farmed out to these judgemental people, it means we, through our taxes, are paying them to shun us, sack us, and refuse to help or employ us. If ever anything deserved the much-abused label 'un-Australian' this nasty piece of legislation does.
I hope Mary Wooldridge missed the vote because the thought of supporting this sort of legislated prejudice sickened her stomach and forced a detour on the way to the chamber.
The party line from small-l Liberals like her, however, is that they have no choice but to support the legislation because it was an election promise. And we all know they are sacrosanct, don't we? Especially Ms Wooldridge.
Before the state election, she promised to fully fund the outcome of the equal pay case currently before Fair Work Australia (FWA).
But in its submission to FWA, the Coalition Government reneged on that pledge, saying it would be unable to fund anything above the $50 million a year it has set aside without cuts to staffing numbers or hours.
Did Ms Wooldridge make that decision herself, or was she a sheep led to slaughter by her hardline colleagues?
A few days before that, the Premier Ted Bailliieu reneged on a promise to make Victorian teachers the highest paid in the country.
And we all know what has happened to the pledge to 'fix' public transport.
Promises are disposable when the political will is there. The state government could have used Ms Wooldridge's little mistake as the perfect get-out - "Sorry folks, but the rules say we can't bring this back until after the next election."
Instead the hardline wolves on the right are determined to force the issue to another vote next week, even if it means bending, breaking, or changing the rules.
We are getting a picture of the stranglehold these right-wing and religious zealots have over this government, and how feeble our sheepish small-l liberal friends are in comparison.
Make no mistake, we're very happy that Ms Wooldridge has managed to keep her promise to direct $4m in funding to GLBTIQ youth mental health - so far. Although we're yet to see the details.
But on the minus side, the GLBTIQ Ministerial Advisory Committees that used to keep the government in touch with our community have not met since the election, and there seems no appetite to revive them.
And the government continues to fund, and has indeed increased funding, for one of the drivers of homophobic bullying and GLBTIQ mental illness, the amateur evangelising religious instruction 'teachers' and evangelising chaplains, infiltrated into our schools by Access Ministries Really Long Link .
Meanwhile the Safe Schools Coalition Really Long Link - currently an opt-in only, funded by the Dept of Education and run by the Rainbow Network Victoria in conjunction with the Foundation for Young Australians - which has an excellent track record in dramatically reducing not just homophobic bullying but ALL bullying in schools, does not know if its funding will be continued past June.
It would appear that our friends in this government - among which I would number the Premier himself - are captives to the like of Attorney-General Robert Clark (who likens gay people to other 'handicapped' individuals, like those with spina bifida), or Education Minister Martin Dixon (former state supremo of Catholic schools) or even the man some are calling the real Premier, Police Minister Peter Ryan.
Unless the small-l's are prepared to put their careers on the line for their principles - a trend I can as yet see no sign of - and take the likes of lions like Petro Georgiou and Malcolm Turnbull as their role models - their time in government will be short.
Because if things continue as they are it cannot be long before the Victorian people tumble to the fact that what we have at the moment is a wolfish Abbott style government in a Baillieu woolly liberal sweater. And their dreams of a second term will remain just dreams.
