TUG OF WHITLAM AND CALWELL FOR AUSTRALIAN DESTINY

FOR MUM AND ME, IT'S TIME TOGETHER AGAIN - IT'S LEST WE FORGET, AND ONE FOR THE ROAD...WHILST I HOUSE HER/STORY IN A VIRTUAL MUSEUM, AND TAKE HER AS MY GUEST TO THE SOMERSET BRANCH OF THE QUEENSLAND ALP MEETING - IT BEING THE 3RD ANNIVERSARY OF THE APOLOGIES BY THE AUSTRALIAN AND BRITISH GOVERNMENTS TO THE FORMER CHILD MIGRANTS.

http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/news/uk-apology-to-former-child-migrants--3rd-anniversary--24022013

Our getting to know each other after a long absence included T.V. viewing on the National Broadcaster: a documentary about Gough Whitlam and what he did for the progress of Australia.

Whitlam had many years to work on policies in Opposition, until it was his Time in History.


The Australian newspaper 1972

 My first awareness of this period was age 10 years in Birmingham, seeing the BBC 9.00pm news. Australian's had elected Liberal Malcolm Fraser as Prime Minister - the man who had created the dismissal of Whitlam. 

Our family would emigrate to Melbourne in 1978 thanks to a step-father with a specialist tool making skill. Year 10 was my first political reading of newspapers and learning about the "Bottom of the Harbour" schemes in Social Studies - a scandal for Fraser and his Treasurer, John Howard. 

Current Prime Minister Julia Gillard is urging the Gonski Education Reforms for the good of the Australian nation 2013, as Gough Whitlam emphasised Education as the key to progress in 1966. The Australian Labor Party has it's faults as does any organisation, but we are renowned for our foresight and creativity in policy direction - the Liberal and National parties don't believe in redistributing the common wealth, creating opportunities for the greatest number of people - or scientific evidence and action on Climate Change.

Historically they fail in expectation of educational standards in their populations and the NEWS is coming in that Premier of Queensland Campbell Newman is denying a national effort on fixing an Education system which is failing all our children.

THE GOVERNING PRINCIPLE OF CAUSE & EFFECT 

IN OPPOSITON Deputy Leader Gough Whitlam with Leader of the ALP Arthur Calwell 1966.

WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY AT  I VIEW ABC TV

"WHITLAM the Power and the Passion" the personal and the political coalesed when the narrator spoke of the Labor Leader Arthur Calwell battling Whitlam's forces for the Labor Party reins to Australia's destiny. 

I turned to my Mum who was able to attend her grandaughter's wedding, thanks to the funds resulting from the British Government's apology to generations of children it was expedient to export. The lobbying and administration of the Family Restoration was by the Child Migrant's Trust:  http://www.childmigrantstrust.com/

"That's Arthur Calwell! He was your Guardian - the first Minister for Immigration in Labor Prime Minister Ben Chifley's Ministry(1945-49),who fashioned Australia's post war migration policy, including the Child Migration scheme...

From the time you were picked by Catholic Child Welfare at nine years to leave England to populate and pro-create Australia, you were Minister Calwell's product of  the White Australia Policy(and his Roman Catholic) social engineering."

 more blogging info
at:http://julie-mcneill.blogspot.com.au/2010/10/boomerang.html

My Mum, Kathleen Clarke 2nd 2nd row arrives in Albury, NSW.

When Gough Whitlam succeeded Arthur Calwell in 1967 then won the 1972 election for the ALP,  the White Australia Policy of Federation 1901 ended.

There was recently an apology by Prime Minister Julia Gillard to unmarried women who were forced to adopt their babies, but it wasn't until Gough Whitlam won the 1972 election this practice wound up with the introduction of a supporting mother's benefit. 

Respect for women, their life conditions and choices were widening.

It is a frustrating fact of parliamentary democracy that improvements, initiatives and repeals of policies can take exhaustive years to eventuate; Whitlam had the will and support to be efficient in reforming the whole society. Today's disability insurance scheme is completing the work of the Medicare reforms of the Whitlam era.

Advocacy for the rights of women is an ongoing battle. Injustices caused by Governments reflect the ongoing struggle with patriarchal cultures. 

Sexual and morality politics is something scary to many politicians and church leaders. Hypocracy and double standards are nothing new. 
If my maternal Grandmother had access to a supporting single mothers benefit in 1940 and 1944 there could have been a lot of unnecessary generational suffering. 

Young people today would be shocked to learn contraceptives were only allowed to married couples in the 1960's and fighting censorship against the likes of the religiously constrained like the Minister for Information Arthur Calwell was an ordeal to be suffered.

It took the election of Gough Whitlam to bring a mature, enlightened, and evidence based policy approach to human reproduction and the Arts!

The days of forced adoptions and orphanages for "illegitimate" babies would wind down, leaving another Parliament to apologise for the pain and suffering of unmarried, stigmatised mothers and their children.

In 1974 the Prime Minister's wife,Margaret Whitlam went to Queensland to support the establishment of a family planning centre, especially when the State had the highest teenage pregnancies in Australia. 

With great dignity and clarity Mrs. Margaret Whitlam also spoke about the need for abortion law reform (It remains
 in the Queensland Criminal Code from the nineteenth century).

It's amazing that the sanctity of all life argued for fetus in the womb, yet hundreds of thousands of civilian lives are killed in invading and warring like in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The brutal treatment of children like my mother in state and church care, and the present harm to asylum seekers in indefinite mandatory detention continues the cruelty towards children amidst the cover-ups of child sexual abuse being presented at the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Sexual Abuse.

WHO WERE THE BASTARDS?

Deuteronomy 23:2 - A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the LORD; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the LORD.
* King James version Old Testament.

MY MOTHER TOLD ME:

In the 1950's a regular punishment for the girls at St. John's Roman Catholic Orphanage, Thurgoona was to be foot whipped by the Sisters of Mercy nuns. If you were caught dragging your feet, Sister Rita with the help of another nun would sit you down with one nun holding your legs up so the other could whip the souls of your feet with a leather strap or cane. 

I visualised what she was saying and was horrified: But that's torture - didn't they do that kind of thing in Changi, or, or in Iraq?

The girls of St. John's were there because they didn't have parents or family to look after them; too poor, dead or illegitimate like my mum - a mere result of some respite from the Birmingham Blitz.

According to Wikipedia, Foot whipping, variously known as bastinado, falanga (phalanga), and falaka (falaqa), is a form of corporal punishment in which the soles of the feet are beaten with an object such as a cane, rod or club, a stout leather bullwhip, or a flexible bat of heavy rubber. It is sometimes favoured as a form oftorture because, although extremely painful, it leaves few physical marks.

The prisoner may be immobilized before application of the beating by tying, securing the feet in stocks, locking the legs into an elevated position, or hanging upside-down. The Persian term falaka referred to a wooden plank which was used to secure the feet prior to beating.

Foot whipping is effective due to the clustering of nerve endings in the feet and the structure of the foot, with its numerous small bones and tendons. The wounds inflicted are particularly painful and take a long time to heal, rendering it a particularly brutal and cruel punishment.

This punishment has, at various times, been used in China, as well as the Middle East. It was used throughout the Ottoman Empire.

Now I have to add, pubescent girls in 1950's Australia.

LEGISLATIONChild Welfare Act 1939 (1939 - 1987)

State of New South Wales

From

1939

To

1987

Categories

Legislation

Summary

The Child Welfare Act 1939 repealed the Child Welfare Act 1923. It was similar to previous child welfare legislation, but much stronger. It expanded the definition of a neglected child to include children who were destitute, whose parents were unfit to retain the child, or who without lawful excuse was not attending school regularly (truancy). The definition of a ward was expanded to include children in state control, committed to an institution, or resident in a hostel for expectant or nursing mothers, meaning unmarried mothers could lose their rights to make decisions. It enabled the Minister to order a child's adoption.

After the Aborigines Protection (Amendment) Act 1940, Aboriginal children were removed under the Child Welfare Act 1939 and subsequent child welfare legislation.

Leader of the Greens, Senator Christine Milne is a woman of words I could have spoken myself (but not as an ALP MP).

Over to the Greens? 

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF MIND. Will we being going back to future? Liberal Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott.  is a committed Catholic as Labor leader Arthur Calwell was. They differed in their comraderie with B.A. Santamaria who split Labor with the formation of a right-wing religious party, but their allegiance is to the dictates of the Pope; the majority of  women might be in Church but the men lay down the rules on their wombs.

Warrior Calwell died in 1973 with a Papal knighthood for his life-long work for the Roman Catholic Church. If only he had cared enough to be a proper Guardian with a Duty of Care to the Children of the Commonwealth, rather than out 

of sight out of mind.

What will be the overarching position elected by the voters of September 2013? Many M.P's are Conservative Christians. We may like to think there is a separation of Church and State, but this article highlights a Pugilist doesn't change his misogynist spots...

http://thehoopla.com.au/abbott-abortion-black-white/