Australia's leading libertarian and centre-right blog
The Activist Rights website complete with Howard Zinn and Malcolm X quotes urging resistence
…funded by…
The Victoria Law Foundation
…funded by…
The Legal Services Board
The responsible minister is the Attorney-General, The Hon. Robert Clark MP.
(HT: Lurker Chris)
Without a taboo against deficits, deficit spending tends to become habitual. It is politically corrosive, because no constituency expects to be the one to have to sacrifice when the limits of borrowing have been reached.
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Isn’t government support for unions and leftist activists groups compulsory in the constitution?
JamesK
1 Aug 12 at 11:32 am
Sack faillieu and clark immediately, gliberals!
What an absolute disgrace.
Rabz
1 Aug 12 at 11:36 am
That said, Sinclair – most of the actual quotes are correct. The Malcolm X one is: “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the oppressed and loving the people doing the oppressing”
Exhibit One
Andrew Reynolds
1 Aug 12 at 11:47 am
If it is promoting subversion and sedition, then I am all for it.
Lysander Spooner
1 Aug 12 at 11:49 am
“If you keep giving whiskey and guns to the Indians, don’t come a-crying to me when the homesteaders get a-scalped and the troopers get a-shot.”
John Wayne.
Pickles
1 Aug 12 at 12:34 pm
Its demonstrative of the attitude among vast sections of our ruling classes. The law is for people with “gross” appatites that must be kept in check, not the refined tastes in revoution/behaviour they and their friends engage in.
Prime example would be Kirby, an openly gay man promoted multiple times, right up to the highest court in the land, all while his behaviour was illegal.
Thats just rubbing the faces of the public in how “special” the lawyer/ruling class are.
Please note this isnt an anti-gay statement, but an observation of how an educated class can disobey the law in a way the hoi-poloi cant.
thefrollickingmole
1 Aug 12 at 12:39 pm
The Liberal Party is useless as either a liberal or conservative institution.
The ALP must love it.
.
1 Aug 12 at 12:40 pm
Their sneering attitude towards drugs pisses me off.
They can buy and use drugs – the poor suffer from drug laws in terms of paramilitary style raids and artificially high prices and have to pay taxes which are inequitable on alcohol and tobacco. The educated class are in part funded by the taxes paid by the poor or working class on excise, as many are public servants.
.
1 Aug 12 at 12:42 pm
Is it the quotes that are the problem?
Jarrah
1 Aug 12 at 12:49 pm
“Kirby, an openly gay man promoted multiple times, right up to the highest court in the land, all while his behaviour was illegal.”
What was illegal about his behaviour?
Jarrah
1 Aug 12 at 1:42 pm
Jarrah – Kirby had been in a homosexual relationship (and still is in the same relationship) before homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW.
Before you jump all over this – I’m simply providing information.
Sinclair Davidson
1 Aug 12 at 2:16 pm
I don’t know which is more perverse:
In the left corner, weighing in with incredible stupidity, is a government that is funding so-called “activists” to protest against, derail and interfere with that government’s own policies;
In the far left corner; weighing in with narcissistic indignation, we have an “activist” group that is so debased, so far from any genuine “protest” position that it is reduced to relying on government funding.
FMD, you couldn’t make this stuff up.
Where is the common sense of the government? Where is the self-respect of the “activists”? All gone.
Cato the Elder
1 Aug 12 at 2:38 pm
Jarrah
Sinc summed it up, its not about the act, I really dont care if Kirbys gay, thats not an issue for me.
What is an issue is he was repeatedly promoted/appointed through the various state/Federal justice systems despite it being quite open knowledge he was engaged in (what was then) illegal behaviour.
If I can stretch the bow, its like a judge being repeatedly promoted despite it being common knowledge he was aqbusing drugs. Then somehow the decades of lawbreaking being made retrospectively “ok” because the drug was made legal.
Judges and lawyers do protect their own, simply because they see themselves as a caste above the norms.
thefrollickingmole
1 Aug 12 at 3:39 pm
You think it’s a case of protecting your own professionally or is it more a case of political ideology trumps all. We’ve seen it in spades over Creeper Thompson.
JC
1 Aug 12 at 3:43 pm
Im inclined to think it is a little of idiollogy, but mostly proffession.
They all “know” each others secrets and scandals, or can find out easy enough.
If I was an evil genius Id be paying for hookers and blow and running large “frat house” style parties near major universities.
A handfull of 2 way mirrors, and you are near untouchable as soon as these new lawyers move through the profession.
thefrollickingmole
1 Aug 12 at 4:07 pm
Definitely lawyers protecting their own. It’s what they do. Every decision they make, every law they influence has one common characteristic: lawyers benefit.
jupes
1 Aug 12 at 4:26 pm
I was just young and niave TFM.
Pickles
1 Aug 12 at 4:46 pm
Odd statements being made in this string.
Clark is one of two or three successful ministers and probably the most outstanding in what many regard as a mediocre Victorian Government team. Unlike most other politicians he manages to get on top of his portfolio and act with integrity. Has already made moves to defund the bad guys unlike his colleagues who have kept them on and even allowed them to advance.
Just think what he could do if he were allowed to select his own team in the public service.
Alan Moran
1 Aug 12 at 4:58 pm
Pickles
Thats enough whining “tijuana donkey boy”, my hubcaps arent shiny enough…
(In truth I think Abe Saffron was an early pioneer of this activity)
Id just propose to do it on an industrial scale.
thefrollickingmole
1 Aug 12 at 5:00 pm
“Judges and lawyers do protect their own”. As if.
As a group, lawyers’ pre-eminent failing is narcissism. A bigger bunch of self-important wankers is hard to find outside of a cardiologists’ convention.
Our other main failing is a kind of hyper-competitiveness. We are constantly trying to do each other in; and steal each others’ clients. Barristers are the worst, because they are all sole traders; and Kirby was a barrister.
It’s brutal; but there are limits. If Kirby’s homosexuality was ignored it won’t have been “looking out” for him, it would have been for the same reason that suspected homosexuality was ignored in many other walks of life at that time: because many suspected but didn’t know; or because those who did know weren’t prepared to “out” him and ruin his career.
Cato the Elder
1 Aug 12 at 5:07 pm
“Kirby had been in a homosexual relationship (and still is in the same relationship) before homosexuality was decriminalised in NSW.”
OK. I hadn’t realised it was illegal so recently.
“despite it being quite open knowledge he was engaged in (what was then) illegal behaviour.”
Well, without a conviction, there was no legal reason to not promote him. But you’re probably right, ignoring it was selective blindness.
“If I can stretch the bow, its like a judge being repeatedly promoted despite it being common knowledge he was aqbusing drugs.”
Many judges are well known as users of illicit drugs. In fact, the legal profession as a whole use drugs at a higher rate than the general population, particularly in criminal law. It’s probably something to do with having to deal with some of the worst people in our society, doing the worst things, on a daily basis.
Jarrah
1 Aug 12 at 5:13 pm
Jarrah
Thats exactly the point, hypocracy of the “ruling class” who then get up and condemn the same behavior they engage in from a court bench.
Im a Justice of the Peace in WA, Im far from impressed by a number of the judges ive been exposed to. One in particular was a known “frequent flyer” who car was ofter seen outside one of my towns known drug dealers. A complaint was eventualy lodged by a retiring police officer, it was considered career suicide by anyone else.
He was transferred eventualy, and Im sure the rationale is something like “people would lose confidence in the system” if judges and lawyers were seen to be dismissed. But he still is a judge.
I consider it hidiously damaging to the rule of law to allow this behaviour to continue. If your job is the law then you have to follow it.
thefrollickingmole
1 Aug 12 at 5:21 pm
Cato
I think the legal profession’s main failing is a lack of exposure to the real world.
Nice family, nice school, nice university, nice first firm, then the bar, locked in a room alone most of the day.
There are execeptions of course, mostly the crims who get exposure to places, people and predicaments that most people only see on TV.
Pickles
1 Aug 12 at 5:24 pm
i.e. protecting their own.
jupes
1 Aug 12 at 6:44 pm
Considering the origins of the law trade ,little surprises me.they are the direct progeny of defrocked and discredited priests,in thevearly days the Roman church would now and then choose a Pope who wasnt as corrupt as they usually were .the new broom would sweep some of the more obvious scum from the clergy,these scum had no skills except writing ,so the illiterate aristocratic thugs used them to legitimize their criminality,this of course they did for money So what has changed ?
Borisgodunov
1 Aug 12 at 8:55 pm
Boris – the full stop comes at the end of the sentence. Then there is a space, and the new sentence starts with a capital.
FYI.
Ta.
Winston SMITH
2 Aug 12 at 5:37 am