Tuesday, February 14, 2006

50 years from now...

... according to Liberal Party backbencher Danna Vale, Australia will be a Muslim country because of all the little Aussies we're aborting today. (I wanted to put a link to the article that appeared in today's Sydney Morning Herald, but they haven't put most of the inflammatory bits on the website.)
WTF? This is wrong on so many levels I hardly know where to start! She says that she heard a Muslim cleric at a Sydney mosque make the claim that Australia would be a Muslim country in 50 years. So what? Go to any evangelical Christian church any Sunday and you'll hear the same thing with the word "Christian" instead of Muslim, but no-one gets upset about that. (Actually, most Aussies react to both claims the same way: "Yeah, whatever... when's the cricket starting?")
And how dare she bring race into the RU486 debate? It makes it sound like eugenics: "if only all those white middle-class girls weren't aborting potential Australians, we would be able to prevent the Muslims from carrying out their not-so-secret plan to convert the whole country". Which is a really screwed up way of thinking. If you take it one step further, perhaps Danna Vale would like to encourage Muslim women to have abortions, because it saves the Australian government the trouble of rejecting the kiddies' refugee applications, sinking their boats or blowing them up in Iraq when they grow up.
Please note: Amanda Vanstone has responded to her colleague's comments by pointing out that she's completely wrong, although I think Mandy's response still smacks of racism. Yet once again I find her standing up against the more offensive views of her fellow MPs, for which I grudgingly give her kudos. Eh, Chloe, next thing we know we'll be having cucumber sandwiches with her ourselves!
And also note: I have written this whole post without a single personal, emotive attack on Danna Vale. Except the bit about taking it one step further. True2life should be (a little bit) proud of me, because I was tempted to say much more.

1 comment:

Linda said...

I heard her on the subject of cucumber sangers, and nearly wet myself. I think the woman was sending dear Dana up for being too middle class. Amanda????

I'm getting very confused in this world.

Is this the start of women thinking for themselves in the Liberals??? I mean, Jackie Kelly going out on a limb on child care.

We live in interesting times.