GetUp! and have a go Australians!

Today, the Australian parliament resumed with the Howard not-liberal government having control of the senate. With an ominous start to events the government changed the rules, once again, without consultation, to limit the number of questions that can be put and seeking to limit the Senate estimates process. Government ministers were typically dismissive of Opposition protests as they are of any protest, criticism, opposition or popular expression.

This is a very dangerous time for Australia. A dangerous man driven by dangerous and malign personal ambitions and (not so hidden now) agendas is at the helm, not just of a conservative government but of a government that has actively courted ultra-conservative, ultra-right wing and Christian fundamentalist forces within Australian politics and society.

A government that has sought to callously take advantage of world tragedy to further its own ideology.

To date the Howard government, in open disregard of widespread popular and political protest has:
*deliberately deceived the Australian people over refugees and the Iraq war,
*changed Australian boundaries to suit its appalling immigration policies,
*wrongfully detained and deported Australian citizens,
*unlike all other nations, ignored the fate of Australian citizens detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention facility in contravention to any form of international law or humanitarian principles,
*run its own malign detention system for refugees in the absence of any compassion or accountability which has seen hundreds of desperate children, women and men locked up behind razor wire in detention camps in the desert.
*arrogantly and deceitfully taken this country, despite widespread popular protest and in the absence of any international mandate or valid reason, into a war that has not only been disastrous for the Iraqi people and led to the deaths of very large numbers of Iraqi civilians and also many Coalition personnel but which has created huge tensions across the globe and inflamed international terrorism,
*imposed Federal control over state jurisdictions like the control of ports and uranium mining,
*committed Australia to the ongoing presence of US troops being based on Australian soil in so-called "joint" facilities,
*actively sought to degrade the independance of the judiciary and the media, stacking the former with its appointees and concentrating the latter in the hands of sympathetic moguls,
*promoting hate and divisions within the community with its prejudicial and discriminatory policies against gay and lesbian people,
*eroding our economic and cultural sovereignty and well-being by submitting us to a so-called "free" trade agreement with the US and, it hopes, China
*openly and embarassingly displaying a fawning and dangerous admiration for and support of the Bush administration,
*and finally introducing sweeping changes to Australia's successful Industrial Relations laws that would erode workers' rights and hobble independant arbitration.

Lacking an effective opposition and facing the bleak prospect of an increasingly restrictive, proscriptive, divided, subservient, homophobic and xenophobic regime, protest is becoming popular and non-traditional. Increasingly, protest is crossing party, religious and socio-demograhic lines.

One striking example of this is the great initiative of Jeremy Heimans and David Madden who have brought the great techniques of MoveOn.org in the US to Australia. Jeremy and David participated in the 2004 campaign against the Bush menace and have now introduced Australians to the power of internet lobbying. Already Coalition senators have been subjected to thousands of emails protesting the state of the nation and warning them that the people will hold them to account. This is people power 2005 style. Add this to the mass protests of the Union movement, the speaking out of Church and community leaders and the opposition within the government's own ranks and we see a glimmer of hope.

Howard, you dismissed us as "the mob". You reckoned you didn't have to listen to us. I reckon you don't have much of a say in that anymore.

Howard, IT'S TIME...again!

If you're Australian, check out GetUp.org, join up and have your say! Make a difference...while you still can.

If you're not Australian, check it out anyway; hear an alternative to the lies of Bush, Blair and Howard.

Oh! And while you're at it, check out MoveOn.org!

And if you're a blogger, keep on blogging...'cause we sure don't look like having any other form of independant media left to us, if this goes on much longer!

I blog, therefore I am...free!