Q&A was on Monday night and as is my wont, I was able to divine most of the show from the Twitter stream stored up waiting for me when I got to my hotel room. And was it a doozy.
Cast your minds back to when the spill happened. I read countless tweets that read something like this:
'Wow! A childless, unmarried, atheist, redhead, woman PM! Brilliant!'
I was pretty bummed by that - so many tweets focussed on the fact that she was those things rather than what's really important - super-intelligent, quick on her feet and possessed of a modicum of compassion. I think she's great. The fact she is a childless, unmarried, atheist, redhead woman was totally irrelevant and to make a big deal of the other things was, I thought, insulting because they didn't mean much. I said so. And got yelled at on Twitter by the usual suspects in my Twitter feed (whom I still love dearly - I'm an adult and am very much able to disagree politely).
So, some idiot in the audience obviously asked stupid questions. Suddenly, where before all of these things were apposite, they are now irrelevant. Why? Because the geese who made such a big deal about these things have been put off by some policy decisions (they went screaming to Penny Wong on one of these and got the same response) and now just want to see Julia see off Tony. As do I. The man's a pillock.
I find this utterly infuriating. Julia doesn't fulfill the ideals that these same people thought she would suddenly sort out for them, that every little bone they had to pick with government would be fixed by somebody 'just like them.' It turns out Julia is a politician and more like Kevin than they are like them.
I had an entertaining debate on Twitter the other evening with someone who was all het up about Gillard's extension of the chaplaincy program. I don't mind one way or another, but of course not wanting to be troubled by reality, these people immediately leapt upon the 'what happens when a suicidal gay teen goes to a chaplain?'
Well, I can tell you that the vast majority of the chaplains will be completely non-judgemental and stick to the rules of that chaplaincy program, which is not to proselytise and merely to listen and offer advice if asked. I asked for figures regarding complaints of the chaplaincy program and they were few and far between and supplied in the form of a link to an article in The Australian. I imagine that this means there hasn't been a lot of complaints.
The simple fact of the matter is that the vast majority of these people will do the right thing by that person. As would a secular counsellor. The key difference between chaplains and social workers are that there aren't enough of the latter for financial reasons. Even if there were enough, $20,000 per school wouldn't cover it. Chaplains are happy to work for that money because they believe they are called to do it as part of their faith. And yes, I understand a vocational calling is very much required for social workers.
Social workers may not have the luxury many chaplains have of supplied housing and income assistance provided by a local church. I would say the average total cost of a social worker would be somewhere in the region of $96,000, about 1.6 times their actual salary. That's five schools, one day a week. Not enough, I think you'd agree.
And, I might add, there would be the same number of complaints against the social workers as there would be against chaplains, because they're all human and all have their own foibles. This is the way the world works.
My favourite tweet was Charlie Pickering's unicorns and rainbows and fairlyland tweet. It's in two parts, and I'll do the second bit first because he couldn't be more right:
'How rights can be apportioned to some not all remains outrageous.'
The first bit was this doozy:
'How an atheist can be anti-gay marriage is beyond me.'
This is staggering insight, I think you'll agree. 'What?' he is asking. 'Someone who thinks like me on one issue isn't the same on another? What what what?'
I'm sorry to inform the very talented and very funny Charlie that no, atheists can be as bigoted as anybody else on this planet. They can say things like that idiot Wendy from Family First, they can be ecological vandals, they can be homophobic, racist nut-jobs. There is nothing special about an atheist that just because they don't believe in God he or she suddenly has a moral compass that points in the same direction as his and it does not give them the monopoly on being right. Atheists often (rightly) complain when someone says that they can't possibly have morals if they are an atheist, why is it acceptable for Pickering to say something so blatantly stupid?
The fact that Gillard is an atheist is irrelevant and I do not really see how it would make her a better or worse PM than the next person. The relevant fact is that she is a politician and leader of the Federal Labor Party. If these other qualities were so important a month ago, why are they not anymore?
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