AUSTRALIAN WOMEN BEING POWERFUL

DESPITE some MISGIVINGS  I RENEWED MY QUEENSLAND ALP MEMBERSHIP MONDAY MORNING -  I WANT A SAY, A VOTE, KEEP COMPANY WITH LIKE-MINDED PEOPLE WHO INSPIRE AND STIMULATE MY BRAIN CELLS IN A POSITIVE WAY - CREATE A LIFE WHICH HAS MEANING.

'I WANT YOUR VOICES TO BE HEARD'

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon, Prime Minister Julia Gillard, Minister for Communities Jenny Maklin
Announcing details of Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse.

It is all in the numbers and the gender what becomes of us and our society. State and Church feared women being empowered. Nuns were afraid to speak up, being abusive to children themselves. If they suspected sexual abuse, or a child being pregnant they could blame a delivery man instead of their Father. Everything could be hushed up, swept under the carpet. The stains of shame on the victim(till thy kingdom come).

I do  have to retreat to guard my mental health sometimes, turn the radio off as the Hypocracy  of political power-plays upsets my equilibrium.
I respond to the best in us. I read Martin Luther King's speech at Primary School: I have a DREAM.

Thanks to Feminism's waves of perseverance, civil disobedience, and sometimes violence against property and themselves, women have increasingly led an autonomous life. 

MY LOCAL BRANCH IN THE BRISBANE VALLEY IS SMALL BUT COMMITTED TO THE GOOD OLD CAUSE of a Fair Go for ALL - WE ARE READY do our bit with renewed ALP tickets.

Opportunity: semi-rural retreat in the Brisbane Valley,
 far from a Brummy birth.

It's not perfect but we KNOW you make a difference by the numbers in the ballot box. 
WHO IS MORE LIKELY TO MAKE A  nourishing foundation for our children and their children?
The Conservative Liberal and National Parties in Australia, especially in Queensland have shallow regard and little imagination for what I have realised as the life-giving principles in life, for the many, not just their kind.

For example, the woman who is now the LNP State Government Minister for the Arts and Science. It's embarassing and bloody sad after the catch-up of neglect from the Bjelke Peterson years. As noted Brisbane singer-song writer said after the Premier talked through her performance: Philistines!

All the infrastructure and artistic and scientific developments promoted by the Labor Premiers of Goss, Beattie and Bligh is struggling to attract the interest of Ministers.
 Many projects like a multi-faceted Arts projectin Ipswich arising with momentum from all members, out of the suffering and recovery of major floods waits to be resurrected.


Like in a Marriage where your partner and you disagree, some policies  the ALP minority Federal Government has moved in fill me with despair and despondency. The treatment of asylum seekers is the major one. My Labor government has become hardened in it's cruelty to asylum seekers and refugees, including children.

It seems the ALP members who seek an end to mandatory detention and more humane treatment are voices in the wilderness, but there are many involved in groups like LABOR FOR REFUGEES, including in Queensland who have friends in Parliament like former human rights lawyer, Melissa Parkes MP Freemantle and worker's and humanist champion, Senator Doug Cameron NSW. who are beacons of hope with their clarity.

Even though I can't fathom how a Labor Government can cut single parents(mainly women) income first, then assist them to get a job second - and if you can't get a job, you've still been deprived of the most basics, I still know the ALP is the best we've got.

Turning 50 is good for argument when you have a HERstory to relate regarding the policies of the present and their effects.
I've been on the long-term dole with young children. 
I've been in a position where I've had to beg for a Medicare funded abortion in a public hospital because of a Catholic board direction.
I know what it is like to be demeaned by hateful people calling you lazy, no-gooders because you are not employed.
My insight into the stressful consequences of living by your wits due to policies driven by old prejudices of Church and State are a constant reason for my compassion. Is somebody keeping a tally on rate of evictions and homelessness since the start of this new regime of New Start for single parents?

 I have never felt like celebrating a National day on the 26th January. Not only does it exclude the indigenous people, most of their kids are locked up or disabled by substance abuse. 
The recent twitter by the twit opposition MP Andrew Lamming inflaming tensions about youth violence in Logan City, Brisbane reinforces the calibre of red-necks still running around our Parliaments. 

For my sanity sake, the big picture has to be preferenced as we change gears in a Federal election year. I'm a woman with an anglo-celtic, working-class pedigree, so the roots and branches of the Labor movement speak to me Past -Present & Future. Why can't everybody think like me?

When I arrived in Queensland and signed up to the ALP I was glad to find an active Queensland Labor Womens Conference and Policy Committee. Every woman in the ALP is automatically a member of the National Women's Labor Network.

I found there are plenty of people within Queensland Labor and beyond who share my perceptions and ideological positions. So yes, I've paid my affordable dues in triple!

 Every woman may find a place to contribute to the policies and organisation. http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/03/09/feminists-the-faceless-women-of-the-alp/?wpmp_switcher=mobile

We know, and evidence supports the fact men in influential positions don't take our lives seriously  - HIStory is not wholistic in it's outreach and redistribution of wealth in the Commonwealth.

Let's buoy the Australian people - No mucking around - Learn from our Mistakes and move forward based on secular, evidence based work and experience.

CRITICAL MASS has arrived in that all those babies taken off their stigmatised unwed mothers because they had no sufficient economic rights have grown up in an era of civil and human rights.Since Feminism, since women studied further and deeper, and spread throughout the institutions, Paedophile activity is now being taken seriously.

The Critical Mass of church instilled stigma and state miserliness for 'women's issues' is being replaced, slowly but surely.

"Social factors influencing critical mass may involve the size, interrelatedness and level of communication in a society or one of its subcultures. Another is social stigma, or the possibility of public advocacy due to such a factor. Critical mass may be closer to majority consensus in political circles, where the most effective position is more often that held by the majority of people in society. In this sense, small changes in public consensus can bring about swift changes in political consensus, due to the majority-dependent effectiveness of certain ideas as tools of political debate." Wikepedia(social dynamics)

It took Leonie Sheed, of the Care Leavers Network 9 years

to campaign for a Senate Inquiry and apology from the Australian Parliament for the

 Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants, and now she is pleased to see the Royal Commission into

 Child Sexual Abuse(though her organisation would like to see it extended to other types).

My own mother said she always got another girl to go with her, when taking the Priest his dinner on a tray at the orphanage.
Now I wonder how many of the girls didn't...
Mother of Mine in the 'Lucky Country'
                                       

Lucky women bloggers had Christmas drinks with the PM.
pic: http://womensagenda.com.au

The Personal is very Political: 


REMEMBER TONY ABBOTT WHEN HE WAS HEALTH MINISTER FOR JOHN HOWARD'S GOVERNMENT? HE DID EVERYTHING HE COULD TO PREVENT FEMALES OF REPRODUCTIVE AGE ACCESS TO THE BEST CHOICES IN CONTRACEPTION.
DON'T LET HIM FOOL YOU INTO FORGETTING.He is the one who really can't be trusted on a grand scale.

JANUARY - THE MONTH OF JANUS - LOOKING BACK - LOOK FORWARD - AND ALWAYS THE POETRY.

As it was in the beginning, so it is today:

BLOOD & DANGER and MORE REFUGEES
PRIMITIVE PATRIARCHS
FUELED WITH TESTESTERONE AND 
DIVINE PROVIDENCE 
DON THE UNIFORM OF SUITS TO NEUTRALISE,
APPEAR CIVILISED, EMPLOY DELAYING
TACTICS  AS  CIVILIANS FLEE OVER BORDERS AND
THE DEAD BODIES OF KITH & KIN SEEKING REFUGE.

CLIMATE IS CHILL FACTOR OR HEAT DISASTER,
THOUGH ALWAYS ANOTHER GREAT LEAP IN WAR 
TECHNOLOGY, MORE EFFICIENT KILLING 
SCRAMBLED CONCRETE MESS OF HOMES,
BROKEN BONES AND MINDS,
THIS YEAR AND THE LAST.

DIPLOMATS AVOID/PREVENT/CIRCUMVENT ALL MANNER
OF TANTRUMS PROCLAIMING SOVEREIGNTY, WAR CRIMES
IMPUNITY, WHILST POLICIES OF EXECUTION  AGAINST PLEBIAN
POPULATIONS REPEAT THEMSELVES EACH CHRISTMAS
ON OUR T.V. SCREENS, LAST YEAR IN PALESTINE, THIS 
YEAR IN SYRIA, WHERE THE ONCE LUSH EUPHRATES,
CRADLE OF HUMAN CIVILISATION HAS NEARLY VANISHED.

                                

(c)copyright Julie McNeill2013
all rights reserved.