January 20, 2004
Mr. Abbott,
The ABC reported today:
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has continued the Government's criticism of state schools, saying some ignore the teaching of traditional values.
Prime Minister John Howard has sparked a debate on the values taught at public schools by saying they are too "politically correct".
"There is a tendency in some schools to ignore what might be described as traditional values, to pretend that all value systems are equal, and I just don't think that's true and I don't think the Australian people think it's true," Mr Abbott said.
He says "politically correct educators" say they teach the value of tolerance but sometimes in Australia the intolerable is tolerated.
As an Australian living overseas, my antennae light up at this kind of sanctimonious drivel. You and your mob really can be quite pathetic. But your craven pandering to the rearguard yobos and stiffcollars who comprise your party's base will not disgust Australians of good conscience as much as will your lamentable, and laughably obvious, appeal through coded language to remnants of age-old Australian bigotry, fear, and provincialism.
Get a grip, man!
But then, you and your mob have no other option but to place all your bets on the long-odds appeal to the closed-minded. After all, you have nothing else to offer, and your days in power are merely a temporary glitch in Australia's progress towards the kind of decency that your mob only impedes.
Please, please, do something other than sit in parliament as a means to slake your own pathetic, ego-fueled inadequacies.
With appropriate disdain,
Mr. Abbott,
The ABC reported today:
Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has continued the Government's criticism of state schools, saying some ignore the teaching of traditional values.
Prime Minister John Howard has sparked a debate on the values taught at public schools by saying they are too "politically correct".
"There is a tendency in some schools to ignore what might be described as traditional values, to pretend that all value systems are equal, and I just don't think that's true and I don't think the Australian people think it's true," Mr Abbott said.
He says "politically correct educators" say they teach the value of tolerance but sometimes in Australia the intolerable is tolerated.
As an Australian living overseas, my antennae light up at this kind of sanctimonious drivel. You and your mob really can be quite pathetic. But your craven pandering to the rearguard yobos and stiffcollars who comprise your party's base will not disgust Australians of good conscience as much as will your lamentable, and laughably obvious, appeal through coded language to remnants of age-old Australian bigotry, fear, and provincialism.
Get a grip, man!
But then, you and your mob have no other option but to place all your bets on the long-odds appeal to the closed-minded. After all, you have nothing else to offer, and your days in power are merely a temporary glitch in Australia's progress towards the kind of decency that your mob only impedes.
Please, please, do something other than sit in parliament as a means to slake your own pathetic, ego-fueled inadequacies.
With appropriate disdain,
