Two hundred and twenty million dollars would be an impressive chunk
of change, even in the huge amount of dough carved out of the federal
tax take for education.
Much less impressive however is Julia Gillard is wasting that much on a
naked and sadly desperate bribe for the god-bothering lobby.
We’ve all read the words ''chronic'', ''underfunding'' and ''state
school system'' placed one after the other so many times now that I
hesitate to do so again, lest your eyes roll back in your heads, your
brain functions flatline and you all start thinking of Wendy Francis as
a reasonable choice for your upper house vote.
But I’m gonna do it anyway. Because the chronic underfunding of the
state school system makes a travesty of the ALP's election promise to
throw hundreds of millions of dollars at untrained, unsupervised and
very often unwanted school chaplains – and all because Gillard has a
problem with drooling creationists and happy-clappers, people so
irredeemably foolish and ignorant that they would assign supreme
executive power on the basis of whether or not somebody claimed to be
friends with their invisible friend.
It fair does my head in guvnor, it does, to think of the number of
teachers aides you could fund with that money. The number of books you
could buy for school libraries. The number of school libraries you
could build, in spite of The Australian’s brave campaign to ensure the current stock of school buildings is the last we shall ever construct as a nation.
What is it about the school chaplaincy program that makes it so
special that it should get funding that would be much better spent on …
oh, I don’t know … education or something?
A simple question with an even more simple answer, of course. The
religious nutters are organised in a way that those of us smart enough
to get through life without the need for fairy dust and magic spells
are not, and you’re really seeing the effects of that on the fringes of
this election. If Gillard has done one thing since seeing off the
Ruddbot, it’s been to draw out the whackjobs and bigots from the
invisible friend lobby. To briefly scan their efforts since the poll
was called is to see an increasing ugliness of mind concerning her
marital status, childlessness, and of course her lack of belief.
Perth’s Catholic Archbishop Barry Hickey
worried that 'Many Christians are concerned that someone who does not
believe in God may not endorse the Christian traditions of respect for
human life, for the sanctity of marriage and the independence of
churches, church schools and church social welfare agencies''.
By ''sanctity and independence'' I think he might have meant ‘''tax-free status''.
And while Family First’s Wendy Francis scored her first real hit of notoriety this week for comparing gay parenthood to child abuse, she warmed up with this tweet about Gillard on August 7:
''First Prime Minister in a de facto relationship shows her willingness to degrade marriage and the family unit.''
Yes. The PM shacked up with her hairdresser because she hates your family and wants to destroy them.
It’s that kind of close-minded, hateful thinking that Gillard is
trying to bring around with her $220m inducement. But the thing about
that sort of thinking? It is never going to be satisfied.
Being based entirely on the dictates of faith in the unprovable, there
are no limits to demands it will make. Pony up a couple of hundred
million for school chaplains today? Where’s the billion you promised us
for faith-based initiatives tomorrow? Yes, your internet filter meets
with our approval, but what about repealing those anti-discrimination
laws so we can treat those faggots with the contempt and the sick
frisson of hatred we actually feel for them? Oh, and it’s not really
good enough for us that you fund a bunch of preachy ''pregnancy
counsellors'' to talk women out of abortions. We’d like to talk to you
about banning birth control altogether.
Who will rid me of these turbulent god-botherers? Not Jules, apparently.
by John Birmingham in the Brisbane Times
Originally posted by Ian Woolf
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