Maybe She Was Right
Franca Arena, I mean. You know, about the paedos. Her former party is not in good shape these days.Sure, we made fun of her at Mardi Gras, speculated that she was motivated by her inability to deal with (apparently) her own twin sons' homosexuality rather than a genuine concern about children, and at the height of her campaign confused paedophilia with homosexuality once too often.
But maybe she was also on the right track. Maybe Orkopolous isn't the only kiddie-toucher in NSW Labor (or in other political, legal and public service fraternities).
The state of NSW politics is dire, to put it mildly. I don't want to vote for this government, nor do I want to vote for the neo-Inquisition Christian mafioso posing as the Opposition. I can take comfort at least in the fact that we have optional preferential voting here, meaning that when I do vote for a third party, it is something more than an ultimately redundant side-step to voting Labor or Liberal.
Iemma and Debnam don't have half a spine between them, both being puppets of their respective parties' machines. Neither side has true solutions to our decaying infrastructure, expanding bloated waistline of urban sprawl, or reconciling our increasingly ghettoised city. And I can't see either side improving while Labor is still beholden to the unions and promoting hacks who whore themselves to the right factions at the right time, or while Clarke is still calling the shots for the Libs and stacking the party with gun-totin' Bible-bashers.
I don't know if the problem is unique to NSW or symptomatic of state governments generally. Current scandals surrounding the NSW, Queensland, WA and Tasmanian governments would seem to suggest the latter - although if Howard actually ever enforced his own Ministerial Code of Conduct, the federal government would be equally as stinky, the key difference being corruption and dishonesty would be punished rather than tolerated.
At least Franca was pure of misguided heart and large hair. Maybe we should bring her back to sort things out.
posted by Sam @ Thursday, November 16, 2006
5 Comments:
There's a paedo in the ALP so Franca Arena is OK? What a fucking stupid conclusion. Of course everyone who is outraged by paedophilia is right. That doesn't make Arena any less of a loony, Sam.
No need for the aggro swatschy. I'm not saying she's OK, I'm saying that what she was suggesting - at least initially - had merit, even if she delivered her message(s) in the wrong way.
Orkopolous is one man who's been caught out - doesn't mean there aren't more in the party. Maybe Arena found that out the hard way.
Sorry for the aggression Sam, but Franca Arena is no friend of the gays.
By the way, Orkopolous has only been charged with kiddy-touching. Even people charged with the most vile and disgusting offences deserve to have their cases heard by the courts.
I can't help but wonder if your post would have been the same if someone from The Greens was facing these charges?
To be pedantic, that would never be an issue as a Green will most likely not (in our lifetimes anyway) be a government minister with the level of power and influence Orkopolous had.
But I like to think I condemn paedophilia equally, regardless of who's perpetrating it. In fact I got carried away on this site once with regard to a Left figure I have a great deal of respect for.
Paedophilia is a fairly disgusting practice that cuts across all political affiliations, but I appreciate that any inquiry/commission/investigation etc should always first focus on the party in office.
Point taken about innocent until convicted, too.
"large hair"
hahaha!
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