Rupert Murdoch and the Holy Father have something in common.  They can’t stand the ALP.  It goes further than that.  ‘Right-wing Catholic’ is a tautology – you won’t find one on the Left this side of the equator or the international dateline.

Yesterday in Victoria, one government office referred the Leader of the Opposition to another government office that deals with allegations of corruption.  Integrity is a big issue in the near state election.  The Opposition Leader Mr Guy stormed out of a press conference.  Accordingly, this story was the dominant headline on the front page of The Age.  The Australian relegated it to an even numbered page boxed in another anti-Andrews piece – which is their schtick.  It goes with the normal sycophantic tripe in the letters – this time applauding Peta Credlin for yet another hit job on Andrews.

Oh well, the sun also rises. 

There is a procedural hiccup in the Lehrmann rape case.  If there is a retrial, the victim can be spared the injury of undergoing cross-examination twice if the evidence is given by a protected process outside court.  This is very common.  It happened in Pell.  But by an anomaly in the ACT, it does not apply there to evidence given in court.  So, the government will move to close off this exclusion.  If they move in time, the amendment will allow the victim to elect to have the evidence replayed.

The Age reports this on an even numbered page (14).  It was front page headline news in The Australian.  ‘Exclusive’.  The caption refers to the article by Janet Albrechtsen.  ‘We’re losing our minds if we do not recognise that this move in the ACT undermines the rule of law.  And dangerously so.’ 

Shriek!  If you don’t agree with me, you are bloody crackers.  

Two quotes will show the intellectual calibre.  ‘Legal sources believe the abrupt law change is intended to assist the DPP in Mr Lehrmann’s retrial…’  Brittany Higgins made a statement outside court.  ‘Many lawyers told The Australian they understood the tenor of her statement to mean Higgins would not be returning to the witness stand for a retrial.’

The conclusion?  ‘This astounding change strikes at the heart of the criminal justice system’s foundational principle: the rule of law.’

The Age concluded its report: ‘Mr Drumgold [counsel for the Crown] noted that the court would maintain the discretion to refuse to admit the recorded evidence to ensure procedural fairness for the accused.’  In other words, the judge will not follow this procedure if he or she thinks that would be unfair to the accused.  End of story. 

But not in the other paper.

What we can we say?

The report in The Australian lacks any sense of moderation or restraint.  It is obviously loaded and partial.  It is the kind of stuff that looks like it was put there just to sell.  The writer either believes this stuff – or she does not.  You can decide which is worse.

Crusading and journalism don’t mix well.  The crusader is partial.  Journalists are supposed to be impartial.

Our press is sadly notorious for getting forensic issues plain wrong.  Those reporters with law degrees are the worst offenders.  In one sad sense, Janet Albrechtsen and Louise Milligan deserve each other.

The press complain that the judges give them a hard time.  After fifty odd years acting for and against them, and losing every contempt case I fought, including getting a journalist six weeks in the slammer for telling the truth on a matter of public interest, I understand that.  But what do they expect if they act like this?

Finally, this is a generational clash between two women.  Older women tend to have different views on this sort of issue.  Put that to one side.  What sort of person relishes the prospect of a complainant in a criminal prosecution having to endure again the ordeal – that is what it is – of being cross-examined in public for hours and hours over shockingly personal issues – because her first ordeal has been put to nothing by an accident outside her control?

More than thirty years ago, Neil McPhee, QC and I were representing directors of Elders in proceedings before the NCA.  That looked to me to be a political pogrom against the late John Elliott, but you have to play the cards you have been dealt.  One of our directors was as frail as he was respectable.  I got a report from his heart specialist – who had been in practice while I was at school – saying that the client was very unwell and that giving evidence could cause him very serious injury.  That evidence was both kosher and undisputed.  But the Crown was desperate.  Counsel – Michael Rozenes – said they could have a specialist on standby outside the hearing room.  When Neil McPhee, with that terse disdain of his, said through gritted teeth: ‘Does my learned friend also enjoy pulling wings off butterflies?’

The press – Age and Australian – Higgins – Lehrmann – Albrechtsen – Milligan.

PETRUCHIO

Come on, i’ God’s name; once more toward our father’s.
Good Lord, how bright and goodly shines the moon!

KATHARINA

The moon! the sun: it is not moonlight now.

PETRUCHIO

I say it is the moon that shines so bright.

KATHARINA

I know it is the sun that shines so bright.

PETRUCHIO

Now, by my mother’s son, and that’s myself,
It shall be moon, or star, or what I list,
Or ere I journey to your father’s house.
Go on, and fetch our horses back again.
Evermore cross’d and cross’d; nothing but cross’d!

….

KATHARINA

Forward, I pray, since we have come so far,
And be it moon, or sun, or what you please:
An if you please to call it a rush-candle,
Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.

PETRUCHIO

I say it is the moon.

KATHARINA

I know it is the moon.

PETRUCHIO

Nay, then you lie: it is the blessed sun.

KATHARINA

Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun:
But sun it is not, when you say it is not;
And the moon changes even as your mind….

‘Fascist’ is a term that is widely abused.  But current events suggest that it might come back into vogue – and I am not speaking of Croatian supporters at a soccer match giving the Nazi salute.

In a book of history, I sought to define ‘fascism’ as follows.

What do I mean by ‘fascism’?  I mean a commitment to the strongest kind of government of a people along overtly militarist and nationalist lines; a government that puts itself above the interests of any or indeed all of its members; a commitment that is driven by faith rather than logic; with an aversion to or hatred of equality, minorities, strangers, women and other deviants; a contempt for liberalism or even mercy; and a government that is prone to symbolism in weapons, uniforms, or its own charms or runes, and to a belief in a charismatic leader. 

The word came originally from the Latin word fasces, the bundle of rods and axe carried before Roman consuls as emblems of authority, and was first applied to the followers of the Italian dictator, Benito Mussolini, Il Duce, and then to the followers of Il Caudillo, Generalissimo Franco, and the Fϋhrer, Adolf Hitler.  Fascists are thick-skinned, thick-headed, and brutal.  They despise intellectuals – who are after all deviants – but they may have an untutored and irrational rat cunning.

As Professor Simon Blackburn of Cambridge University tersely remarks: ‘The whole cocktail is animated by a belief in regeneration through energy and struggle’ (kampf).  To an outsider, it looks like pure moonshine that is the first refuge of a ratbag and a bully, a brilliant and seductive toy for the intellectually and morally deprived, and an eternal warning of the danger of patriotism to people of good sense and good will.  But while that ‘cocktail’ may look a bit much for Plato, it looks fair for Sparta.

We can I think test the meaning of the term by comparing the attributes of the fascist regimes of last century with the behaviour of one large current regime that poses a threat to the peace of the world.

• The nation has a history that is at best beset – indifferent, incoherent, or merely recent – but which its people wish to glorify, so that they feel better.  And they do so, even though the nation has rarely if ever been decently governed – compared to those in Europe and the U S – what is called the western world.
• The regime has a leader who has no obvious qualification or character, except a capacity to work the system to help his people justify themselves and the nation.
• The leader has got where he is by foul means, but he becomes a cult figure.  He does so by combining bread and circuses, and fancy uniforms and even fancier fables about the past, with brute force.  People are either charmed, or beaten into submission.  Dissent is stifled, and its proponents are eliminated – if necessary, with extreme prejudice.
• It is an essential part of this process that the better people of the nation, or those who should know better, are bought off.  The leader does this by persuading them that the price of getting their hands dirty, or just looking away, is worth paying.  He is able to do this because the nation has not built up a reserve of character that is capable of arresting this decline.  The nation just does not have enough in its history to resist.  And the people are deluded into thinking that they retain the power to stop and get rid of their leader. 
• And all of the time, the position of the people is weakening because they have been complicit in the working of the bad side of the regime and cannot banish their shame.  They know, without acknowledging it, that they must bear the stains of their state.  They are prisoners of their own default.
• The leader encourages a mystical view of a glorious past that is almost wholly imaginary.  He knows that his core support comes from people who fear uncertainty or doubt and who want simple answers.  He knows these people are credulous – and is prone to boast about his power over them.
• Since the history of the nation is recently invented, it is not hard to say that any troubles that the nation faces come from forces of darkness that it is the imperative duty of the leader to eliminate – or, if you prefer, liquidate.  And each regime has a long and bad history in condemning scapegoats.
• These forces of darkness that are the enemies of the state are easy to identify, and the nation has been let down, if not betrayed, by previous regimes who failed to deal with them adequately.  This was very bad because those failed office holders are now seen as inferior as the people that they allowed to infect the nation.
• The leader preaches that the wrongs done to their nation in the past give him and his people imperative moral rights to seek living space elsewhere (one to its right and one to its left – for which it has very bad form).
• There is no rational basis for dissent or even debate on these questions since they fall to be resolved by the inexorable logic of those who have the answer.  Those who cannot see the truth are not just wrong – they are deprived, or deficient.
• Because the nation has little or no settled history of responsible government, or the rule of law, and is led by someone beyond the power of the people to contain, and that person is in power for himself, the regime is a nightmare that moves from one conflict and crisis to the next – until it finally explodes with hideous consequences.  Each such regime must end in its own collapse, for the same reason that Ponzi schemes must eventually implode.
• Against all that, it is not surprising that the regime commits crimes against humanity.  At bottom, it relies on brute force and it is a police state.  That is, the state is run by the leader and his police, who are not subject to any legal restraint.
• These crimes are committed not just against people in the lands it invades, but against its own people.  It is fundamental to these regimes that the individual has to give way to the state and may be called on to suffer for the state.  (That is their version of original sin.)
• The most notorious regime last century experienced a collapse made more hideous by the treacherous dementia of its leader.  It was left a shattered shell, morally and physically.  It is now a prime source of stability and decency in the world.  This in large part because it had a prior record of contributing to western civilisation that is almost unmatched.
• That is not so with the current regime.  It has never been decently governed.  The epithet ‘civilised’ has only ever been applied to it because of the remarkable output of a few artists of genius – who could survive despite the regime.  That nation is now so far apart in time and space that it is hard to see a decent future for it.
• Each regime has come to terms with religious leaders – which reflect ill on their faith.  The church in the current regime is notorious for collaborating with despots.  Art is alien, and each regime, following the example of Sparta, is viciously corrupt.  Each regime is a soulless wasteland.
• Each leader is in truth a viscerally nasty little runt.

The discussion shows the need to be careful about which nations we may be content to describe as ‘civilised.’  In the same book I referred to above, I said:

In my view a nation or people cannot call itself civilised unless each of the following five criteria is met. 

• It has a moral code that respects the person and the dignity and the right to property of each person in the group. 
• It has a mature and stable form of democratic government that is willing and reasonably able enforce that respect and those rights, and to preserve its own democratic structure.  (I have opted for democracy because it seems to be the fairest mode of government and to be the best able to deliver the other objectives.)
• It observes the rule of law …and it seeks to protect the legal rights of its members. 
• Its working is not clogged or threatened by corruption. 
• It seeks to allow its members to be able to subsist and, after providing for their subsistence, to have sufficient leisure to pursue happiness or improvement in such ways as they may choose, provided that they do not harm others. 

Put differently, a group of people may be said to be ‘civilised’ to the extent that its members are ‘civil’ to others.

In that light, each regime referred to above was or is in a nation that in its present state was or is not civilised.  That is not surprising.  What may be of concern is the extent to which we can see any of the above symptoms in France under Napoleon, England under Boris Johnson, or the United States under Trump. 

The categories of political failure are not closed.

Fascism – Hitler and Putin – Trump – rule of law – civilisation.

Thank God, we have more or less ducked having God in our politics here.   

Governor DeSantis really worries Trump – who is already threatening blackmail in response.  DeSantis flaunts God as much as the flag.  It is nauseating, and would be political death anywhere else.  But it is the kind of God-given pap that sells in the US.   And leaves them with third world political status in their own sink of credulity.

Frank Bruni in the Times says DeSantis peddles ‘cultural pugilism and relative economic moderation’.

1.  How do you translate that – whatever it may mean – into law – apart from by dismantling health care or defence?  Put shortly, there is no platform, but God and the flag.  And even the most stupid MAGA man knows that God is not in Trump.

2.  Specifically, how do you pose as the ‘freedom’ party when its members pay political allegiance to an omnipotent God and earthly leader who demands more loyalty than Putin or Xi?  How do you pose as being for ‘freedom’ if God does not allow half the human race freedom with their own bodies?  Although there is no record of God ever saying anything about the relevant laws?

There is a more fundamental point.

Shortly before polling stations closed on Tuesday Trump said: ‘Well, I think if they [Republicans] win, I should get all the credit.  If they lose, I should not be blamed at all.’  The triumph of egoism and nihilism.  Verging on madness.

People talk of Trumpism without Trump.  There is no such thing.  Trump stands only for himself.  His ego is too big and his mind is too small – see above – to allow for any one or any thing else.  Is there one person left in the world who looks to be even close to Trump?

Perhaps Americans are grasping that there is nothing – rien –at all in Trump.  The old saying was that the emperor has no clothes.

If so, the nightmare of the world may be coming to an end.  The threat of loss of office and power concentrates the mind wonderfully.

Politics – Trump – Republicans -democracy

You might think it is too early for Christmas shopping and annual awards, but a recent little gem and a Vesuvial explosion have changed the whole game.  When some lions escaped from a zoo, management said that ‘there had been an integrity issue with the containment fence.’ 

As they say in Rear Window, outstanding!

Then there was this from a speakers’ agent.

Scott Morrison is the true definition of a leader with a 360-degree worldview.  During his tenure, Morrison was tasked with several difficulties that required unique and innovative solutions.  From managing the public safety of the Australians during the pandemic to mitigating an economic crisis, controlling natural disasters, and leading the country while others were at war, Prime Minister Morrison led Australia with his particular brand of calm decisiveness and rationale.  A virtuous [yes, virtuous] globalization mastermind, Morrison lends his boundless influence and experience to audiences around the world.

Rarely in the realm of human history, has so much damage been done in so few words, to both language and logic.  It is a veritable miracle.

Now, here is no Prometheus to steal fire from heaven.  But that the audience gets the Almighty as a free extra is implicit from the express stipulation that the ensainted orator is up for ‘controlling natural disasters.’

So – ring out the tocsin!  Let all the bells peel!  And let the bonfires be released!  The year 2022 will go down as that in which the people of Australia grasped the sheer enormity of the bullet they had just ducked.

Morrison – delusions – false grandeur.

Some players in cricket and netball have objected to wearing some advertising – and that is what it is – on their playing kit.  They do so because they object to the product of the sponsor.  This has led to some discussion.

Why should not a responsible person object to selling a harmful product? 

The problem, then, is the old one.  Where do you draw the line? 

Betting on sport is designed by nasty people to appeal to foolish people.  So that the nasty people profit from the fools.  As a result – and a result that is both predictable and direct – people get hurt; people get broken; and people are killed. 

Gaming is an insidious national cancer, and our failure to treat it is a disgrace to us all.

What decent person would not object to assisting nasty people to achieve those results? 

I know of no answer to that question that supports the current practice.  It is in my view shameful that sporting clubs assist betting on sport when that practice has the ill effects I have referred to.  It also leads inevitably to the risk of corrupting the sport. 

It is equally disgraceful that government continues to receive so much revenue from so vile a source.  Our governments have been bought off from doing the right thing.  This is the very dark side of capitalism.

But for me, our discussion about the reactions of the players overlooks a prior issue when we are talking about players wearing national colours – in, say, cricket, rugby or rugby league. 

Putting on the green and gold for our country is one of the few times we can decently refer to pride in our country.  We have a proper aversion to the word ‘patriot’ here – just look at the damage it does in America – but being part of an international sporting contest gives us a decent licence to feel it.  (Even the Germans are prepared to bring out their flag for the footy.)

It is just so vulgar – so depressingly common – to ask those who wear our colours – my colours –also to wear an ad for a sponsor.  Because those entrusted with handing out the jersey want the sponsor’s money.  Isn’t that just bloody grubby and unworthy of you and me?  Irrespective of what the sponsor sells or even stands for.  Those entrusted with running the sport – and it is a form of trust – are putting my colours up for sale.  We don’t do it for our judges, priests, or soldiers, and we shouldn’t do it to our cricketers and footballers.

Now, I am not saying that Pat Cummins and my team are being asked to turn out like sluts in white boots in the Bois de Boulogne.  But I am saying that people wearing the green and gold are asked to demean themselves and me by acting as salesmen while they are representing me. 

How can we tolerate any of this stuff?

My NRL team – Melbourne Storm – customarily wears the Crown logo.  That troubles me and it annoys me, and it is the subject of barbed comments by my friends.  But I am free to react accordingly – by, for example, going elsewhere to give my support. 

But I cannot and I will not do that for my nation’s teams – such as those led by Donald Bradman, John Eales, or Mal Meninga.  And it is not just the boys and girls of Australia who look up to these people.  They, and what they stand for, are part of the very fibre of this nation.  (And while I am about it, the Kangaroos’ jumper is the stand-out.  That’s what I call a bloody footy jumper.)

Let me give one example.  There was a time when you might have said that there could be no harm in the Wallabies’ wearing a red kangaroo on their jumper in support of the national airline.  But this listed company is now widely seen by the people of Australia to be as repellent as its preposterously overpaid boss. 

Who would want to be seen standing up for Telstra?  Or NAB?  Or the Australian Christian Lobby?  Or Foxtel?  What if some lunatic in government thought it would be a good idea to send the Wallabies out to endorse Centrelink – a name that fills most Australians with fear and loathing?

So, let us urge what used to be called the Panama Hat Brigade – the mob who put down Dawn Fraser and Cathy Freeman and who put up Kevan Gosper – to clean up their act and stop trashing our colours.

And the same goes for other big events in our national life.  It is a matter of taste or judgment whether you regard the Lexus Melbourne Cup as being as silly or offensive as the Fosters Melbourne Cup.  Then there was the time when the ownership of a national totem was shared with a foreign airline based in a nation that is mired in corruption and which treats half its people as doormats and all gay people with contempt.  How is that sporting bodies and players can wave through an outfit as repellent as that, but put up a red light to a smaller mob from Hong Kong whose sin is to dabble unfashionably in coal?

All that sponging is surely equally degrading – both to me and to the city that is the sports capital of the world.  It is time to cut it out.

Sponsorship in sport – gaming in sport – corruption – hypocrisy – misgovernment.

Ancient Law was written by Sir Henry Maine and published in 1861.  For a variety of reasons, all of which are depressing, you will not see such scholarship or juristic writing again. 

The book is famous for the reference to the movement from status to contract.  The whole book has profoundly affected my thinking about the law, and I keep going back to it. 

As I did this morning when reflecting on the appointment of a Hindu as Prime Minister of England.

I wondered what might be his attitude to caste.  That is I believe a tenet or practice of the Hindu religion.  It is in my view evil.  It represents the reverse of the maxim referred to above, and it is utterly unacceptable in this country – which is committed to equality – at least of opportunity. 

I recalled that Maine had something lapidary to say about caste.  I set it out below.  You will see another reason why we will not see this kind of writing now.  (I apologise for the glitches in transition.  I am an ageing two-fingered typist.)

The question then arises.  Do those agitating for a Bill of Rights to protect freedom of religion say that Hindus should be free to practise and propagate their creed on caste?

Among the chief advantages which the Twelve Tables and similar codes conferred on the societies which obtained them, was the protection which they afforded against the frauds of the privileged oligarchy and also against the spontaneous depravation and debasement of the national institutions.  The Roman Code was merely an enunciation in words of the existing customs of the Roman people.  Relatively to the progress of the Romans in civilisation, it was a remarkably early code, and it was published at a time when Roman society had barely emerged from that intellectual condition in which civil obligation and religious duty are inevitably confounded.

Now a barbarous society practising a body of customs, is exposed to some especial dangers which may be absolutely fatal to its progress in civilisation.  The usages which a particular community is found to have adopted in its infancy and in its primitive seats are generally those which are on the whole best suited to promote its physical and moral well-being; and, if they are retained in their integrity until new social wants have taught new practices, the upward march of society is almost certain.  But unhappily there is a law of development which ever threatens to operate upon unwritten usage.  The customs are of course obeyed by multitudes who are incapable of understanding the true ground of

their expediency, and who are therefore left inevitably to invent superstitious reasons for their permanence.  

A process then commences which may be shortly described by saying that usage which is reasonable generates usage which is unreasonable. Analogy,

the most valuable of instruments in the maturity of jurisprudence, is the most dangerous of snares in its infancy. Prohibitions and ordinances, originally confined, for good reasons, to a single description of acts, are made to apply to all acts of the same class, because a man menaced with the anger of the gods for doing one thing, feels a natural terror in doing any other thing which is remotely like it. After one kind of food has been interdicted for sanitary reasons, the prohibition is extended to all food resembling it, though the resemblance occasionally depends on analogies the most fanciful.

So, again, a wise provision for insuring general cleanliness dictates in time long routines of ceremonial ablution; and that division into classes which at a particular crisis of social history is necessary for the maintenance of the national existence

degenerates into the most disastrous and blighting of all human institutions – Caste.  

The fate of the Hindu law is, in fact, the measure of the value of the Roman code.  

Ethnology shows us that the Romans and the Hindus sprang from the same original stock and there is indeed a striking resemblance between what appear to have been their original customs.  Even now, Hindu jurisprudence has a substratum of forethought and sound judgment, but irrational

imitation has engrafted in it an immense apparatus of cruel absurdities.  

From these corruptions the Romans were protected by their code.  It was compiled while the usage was still wholesome, and a hundred years afterwards it might have been too late.   The Hindu

law has been to a great extent embodied in writing, but, ancient as in one sense are the compendia which still exist in Sanskrit, they contain ample evidence that they were drawn up after the mischief

had been done.   We are not of course entitled to say that if the Twelve Tables had not been published the Romans would have been condemned to a civilisation as feeble and perverted as that of the

Hindus, but thus much at least is certain, that with their code they were exempt from the very chance of so unhappy a destiny.

Freedom of religion – Sir Henry Maine – Hindus – caste.

Some politicians and members of the press live by labels.  Some who call themselves ‘conservatives’ loathe those whom they label as ‘progressives.’  Each term is as dubious as the other.  Each is in truth bullshit.

The Liberal Party has trouble – as much trouble as the Labor Party – in saying what it is about.  There tend to be at least two views – one the old type of ‘conservative’; the other, the old type of ‘liberal.’  Each of those terms is now useless – bullshit, in truth. 

That does not stop either side citing Robert Menzies in support.

Take George Brandis.  He wants some people to leave Menzies alone.  He refers without naming them to the Sky After Dark crowd who recently saluted Nigel Farage.  Brandis says that Menzies was influenced by both Gladstone and Deakin – ‘anti-socialist progressives.’

…. he very deliberately avoided naming [the Liberal Party] the ‘Conservative Party’….  ‘We took the name ‘Liberal’ because we were determined to be a progressive party, willing to make experiments, in no sense reactionary, but believing in the individual, his rights and his enterprise, and rejecting the Socialist panacea.

Of course, there was much that was conservative about Menzies.  This was most obvious in his traditionalism, in particular his sentimental devotion to British institutions.

Are you clear about all that?  True ‘Liberals’ are not ‘conservatives,’ but ‘progressives’.  But they are against Socialism.

When did you last run into a Socialist?  Someone who believes in Medicare, or relief from rising power prices, or disaster relief for fires, floods, and epidemics – that blow the deficit to Kingdom Come?

Each of the labels ‘conservative’, ‘liberal’, ‘progressive’, and ‘socialist’ is now useless at best and positively dangerous at worst.

The bullshit is and has been for a long time obvious.  And it obscures one sad issue for our two-party system.  Name one policy statement of the Liberal Party or the Labor Party that is flatly contradicted by the other.

Liberal – conservative – progressive – socialist

The nonsense about ‘religious freedom’ just keeps going – even after the blessed exit of the man from Hillsong. 

As Kant said, no one can stop you praying to God.  But if God, or Allah, calls on you to follow Him in dealing with other people, you may have to confront Caesar.  And if God puts you in conflict with Caesar, our community says that Caesar must prevail.

We would not I think be having this discussion if people of some faiths did not wish to treat differently people of different sex or sexuality – women and gay people.  And those people wish to be able to do that in a way that discriminates against people.  But Caesar has banned that discrimination.  This claim for ‘religious freedom’ is therefore a claim for a kind of privilege – a dispensation from the general law on the ground of religious belief, and nothing else.

I regard this as offensive as it is silly.

We are not talking about beliefs, but conduct – when people of faith seek to give effect to their beliefs in ways that affect other people.  And where they then harm others.  In our polity, my freedom ends when my exercise of it might hurt you.  And there is no doubt that what some people want to do to people of a different faith or sexuality hurts those people.

So, the law cannot control what I believe, but it must control what I do.  And I cannot be heard to say that Caesar should license me to discriminate against some people just because God says that I can or must do so.  Some may cite scripture to support that case.  I would not.

On that ground, I would oppose altering our laws to accommodate people of faith.

There is another ground.  Good friends of mine are Anglican or Catholic – and real ones: they are in communion with their church.  We may waffle on about the differences between them, but my own position is simple.  People of faith believe that all faiths have no sufficient basis except one – theirs.  I have no exception.  I think they are all up the creek.  But, viewed from the eye of eternity, or God, every faith is a minority in the world at large.  It just depends which side of the street, or border, you are born on.

The reason for these insoluble differences of religion is clear.  We are talking of issues of faith, not logic.  No one can ‘prove’ their case in this arena – although a lot of otherwise very bright people thought they had.  Faith is beyond logic. 

When people speak of the word of God, they refer to what someone else said God has said, as interpreted by God knows how many wise men through the ages.  It is, if you like, a combination of hearsay and opinion evidence.  But it is a matter of religious belief that is wholly fallible.  By definition, that must be the case with issues of faith.  You may get a rock to build a church on, but not a case to change our laws in ways that may hurt others.  No faith can be universal – or applied universally.

On that ground also, I would reject any change of our laws to accommodate some people of faith.  If you believe that humanity is moving upwards, it must in some part because we are continuing to cut down our reliance on the supernatural.  Australia is not a religious nation, and we should not be changing our laws to suit those who wish we were.

There is one other issue.  Some people of faith are agitating these issues in ways that are in my view not just groundless, but actually harmful to others.  It is an irony that people claim to be victims of discrimination as a minority – because they wish to discriminate against another minority.  When, across the world, any faith must be a minority.

The Australian Christian Lobby, a frightful contradiction in terms, looks the worst.  They want to sponsor arguments that will cause division in the community and pain to many in it.  That they do so purportedly in the name of a man loved and revered through history makes it so much harder to bear. 

But their conduct shows the need for our lawmakers to look closely at any grounds in our laws, relating to charities, corporations or tax, that gives them or anyone like them any relief from or protection against our general laws.  It is wrong that the community as a whole should be giving aid to those working against others in that community.

I will instruct my parliamentary members accordingly.  Who knows?  This may be the moment for those phantoms – the silent majority or quiet Australians.  The noise from a zealous minority has served to drown out sense and fairness for far too long.

Politics- ACL – God – faith – logic.

MINI & MINI COOPER

Colour Family Album

Andrea and David Sparrow

Veloce Publishing PLC, 1997; bound with illustrated cloth boards and colour photos; rebound with one quarter leather, and slip case.

My first Mini will almost certainly be my last car.  What a way to go out!  Mine is almost identical to the Mini Cooper shown on the front and rear covers of this book – red with white stripes, roof, and mirror caps.  The cover also features a Britannica, with the Union Jack on the shield.  She has the kind of look on her face that people get walking to the dentist’s chair.  This may because she has been asked to pose with the helmet, spear and shield – and designer sun-glasses.  Well you also get a badge for the Rallye Monte-Carlo.  Could this vehicle come within the purview of that frightful word ‘iconic’?

I don’t know, but since I got mine, I can see why some people call it the poor man’s Ferrari.  It may only cost about one twentieth of a Ferrari, but you get personality and style – and raw driving pleasure.  I am far too old to claim the benefit of a mid-life crisis, but I am happy to admit to wallowing in one last fling.  I have not driven a Ferrari – and will sadly shuffle off this mortal coil marked by that virginity – but I suspect that those who do have a Ferrari know what it is like not just to provoke being looked at – but to invite and to get raw smiles.  You may be surprised how often people come up to you after you have parked your Mini and say – ‘I like your car, Mate,’ or ‘My Dad had one of those and can’t stop talking about it’, or ‘My young daughter has her heart set on a Mini’.  Even an eight year old girl outside my General Store said ‘Gee, I love that Mini Cooper.’  The man who I guess was her dad had probably put her up to it, but it was not a bad start to that day.  Why shouldn’t a charming car be the engine of goodwill among people?

The Mini was born in England in 1959.  It was then associated with two great names in British motoring – Austin and Morris – and it was owned by the British Motor Corporation.  In 1969 it came out in its own name.  For many reasons, not least its role in some movies, such as The Italian Job, it achieved something like a cult status that is still recalled by people of my age – and many a lot younger. 

Ownership of the marque moved from British Leyland to Rover to BMW.  As owners of Bentleys will tell you, there is a lot to be said for a car that has a German engine and English coachwork.  People who turn their noses up at the English component forget the long proud history of that nation in making motor cars.  They still make most of the cars that surround the engines of most F1 cars.  Motor racing does appeal to a very different demographic (social class, Old Boy) in England and Germany than in Australia.  You might be surprised where you will run into the most polite kind of petrol head.  You might even find some in our most discrete gentlemen’s clubs.

Most Minis now take part of their name from John Cooper.  He was a most extraordinary engineer, even by the high standards of those involved in British motor car engineering.  It was he who changed the face of motor sport at its fastest and highest levels by putting the engine behind the driver in Formula I and the Indianapolis 500.  ‘We certainly had no feeling that we were creating some scientific breakthrough!…We put the engine at the rear…because it was the practical thing to do’.  That is a definitively English remark. 

Cooper effected a similar revolution in ordinary motor car racing with the distinctive handling of the Mini.  Younger people may not be aware of the impact of this kind of car on that kind of racing.  It won rallies all round the world.  It even won at Bathurst, and it won the Dakar, perhaps the toughest competitive event in sport, for four years straight from 2012 to 2015.  Whichever way you look at it, the pedigree of the Mini Cooper is assured.  

This book speaks to most of all that, but I have the book for the pictures – including the mini-skirt – and a slice of English social history.  The Introduction reads:

Surely anyone in Britain who remembers the sixties will have fond memories of the Mini.  At some point in the sixties or seventies, you either owned one or learned to drive in one, dated someone with one, or sadly could not afford one.  If you were to be transported back to those heady days, of course, you could discover that the ride was not very comfortable, and that older models came with ‘free indoor rain’; that wasn’t the point.  In the sixties the Mini was not just a car, but part of a whole new way of life.  Post-war austerities had given way to new freedoms – of movement, of expression, and of views.  This was the car being seen increasingly on the streets, the car that was winning the Monte Carlo Rally, the car that everyone wanted.  The production life of the Mini has spanned three distinct eras [1997- pre BMW] – BMC, Leyland and Rover.  And woven into the first and last of these eras is the amazing Cooper success story.  Clearly the Mini has earned the accolade of a true classic.

Well, some of those older Ferraris were doubtless not that easy to handle, and the Mini Cooper you get now has none of characteristic problems of cars made half a century ago.  Rather the marriage of German and English history and engineering delivers an appealing hat trick – style (or charm), heft, and reliability; you may as well add economy; and history. 

If I have a philosophy, this car fits two of its premises very well.  The first is that I believe that God laid out a very handsome table for us all, and that courtesy requires that I should do all I can to enjoy what is on offer.  The second is that if you have worked hard and been paid for it, you should not hesitate to reward yourself.  In my view money is only of any use when you part with it to get back something that means more to you – either something that you need or that just gives raw pleasure.  There has to be more to life than work and money.  Or, as the German historian Theodor Mommsen said:

When a man no longer finds enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain enjoyment as quickly as possible, it is a mere accident that he does not become a criminal.

You can drive my Mini Cooper either in automatic or manually.  I took mine to the Grampians to test out the gearing on the sandy roads out the back – the terrain is typical of WRC rally tracks.  The locals told me it was too wet.  So, I went to the top of the biggest mountain on bitumen, and then, at the second attempt, came down without touching the brakes once.  When I got back home, I reported on this to two very distinguished and proper ladies of letters.  One of them replied:

Whee! My greatest car thrill was driving down the Stelvio – 27 hairpin bends, I think – into Italy. Took it as fast as I could. Loved it.

‘Whee!’, indeed.  There should be a lot more of it.  We could all be bloody dead tomorrow.