ASP News & Updates

Legalise Marijuana to Lessen Alcohol-Fuelled Violence

Details: Published on Monday, 13 January 2014 01:23

The Australian Sex Party has called on the Prime Minister to legalise marijuana in Australia as the most effective and immediate way of lessening alcohol-fuelled violence in Australia and redefining Australian late night street culture.

Legalising marijuana also has the advantage of raising many millions of dollars in taxes that could be put to national drug and alcohol education programs.

Sex Party President, Fiona Patten, said that the effects of smoking marihuana as a social drug were almost the opposite of alcohol. “Too much alcohol makes people aggressive”, she said. “Too much marijuana puts them to sleep”

She said the latest National Drug Strategy Household Survey (2010) had shown that 10.3% of all Australians (14+) had used cannabis in the past 12 months and that 35.4% of all Australians had used cannabis at some time in their life. “All of these people will testify to the truth of the assertion that marijuana made them less violent than if they had used alcohol”, Ms Patten said. “Many of those who go out and binge on alcohol for a night would swap for marijuana if it was legal”.

Most consumers of cannabis are NOT problematic users and do not need help or medical intervention for their usage but for the few who do, the financial burden of their problem is borne by the rest of the non-cannabis smoking community. If the product is taxed, then the cannabis smoking community pays for those who need help - thus freeing up of vital healthcare money to be spent elsewhere.

Ms Patten said that opening up Dutch-style marijuana cafes in problem areas like Kings Cross could radically affect levels of violence by changing the culture of these areas. “I lived in the Kings Cross area for 10 years and saw the changes happening first hand”, she said. “When the NSW government closed down adult shops, table top dancing venues and other adult venues in Kings Cross, the only entertainment left for many patrons was to sit and drink all night. Opening legal marijuana cafes like Amsterdam would lead to more restaurants, galleries, tea and coffee houses and a more diverse range of late night venues. You don’t see alcohol-fuelled violence on the streets of Amsterdam late at night”*.

*Amsterdam is actually one of the safest cities in the world. International consultancy Mercer ranked Amsterdam 22 out of 215 world cities for personal safety in its 2008 Quality of Life Survey. Fellow European capitals Paris and London didn't even make the top 50.

Sex Party calls for a National Dress like a Biker Day

Details: Published on Wednesday, 08 January 2014 11:54

The Australian Sex Party has proposed a "National Dress like a Biker Day" as an organised protest against the Queensland government’s Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment laws that restrict people’s rights to socialize with who they want to.

The call is for tens of thousands of non-biker Australians to dress in leather jackets, denim, chains and insignia in public places.

Sex Party President, Fiona Patten, said that freedom of association is one of the primary civil liberties that every Australian should be able to enjoy. “The laws enacted by the Newman government and by governments elsewhere in Australia, threaten this basic freedom, just as other laws have threatened the right of workers to unionise or for protesters to congregate” she said.

She said that the application of these laws could easily be extended to disrupt any activity deemed inappropriate by a government on a moral crusade. “Today it’s the type of clothing that people are wearing in public. Tomorrow it could be whether you are circumcised or not or whether you have a particular type of tattoo or even a particular hair style”, she said. “If we can mobilise a few thousand people to dress like a bikie for a day and walk around Australian cities with a few friends, we might just see the police unable to cope with an action like this”.

Ms Patten said that there were better ways to address the problems associated with outlaw motorcycle gangs, their dealings in the illicit drug trade and the associated violence. “The Australian Sex Party has long campaigned for drug law reform that would take the profits out of the hands of criminals. This is the way to deal with criminal activity, not trying to shut it down through freedom of association laws which affect all Australians.”

She said that no Australian should be faced with prison when their only proven crime was associating with two other persons in a manner deemed inappropriate.

Sex Party calls for a rethink on Biker Laws

Details: Published on Wednesday, 08 January 2014 03:21

The Australian Sex Party is calling for the federal and state governments of Australians to rethink their laws that restrict people’s rights to socialize with who they want to.

The Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment laws have already seen Australians arrested and denied bail, simply for walking down the street together.

“No law should be capable of interfering with the lawful social, political or sexual intercourse of consenting adults.”

We have seen the absurd example of Premier Campbell Newman's staff explaining how the laws affect group sex, and can see how the application of these laws could easily be extended to disrupt any activity deemed inappropriate by a government on a moral crusade against nightclubs, brothels, swingers and BDSM clubs.

She said that no Australian should be faced with prison when their only proven crime was associating with two other persons in a manner deemed inappropriate.

Minor parties should be held to the pre-poll preference promises they make

Details: Published on Monday, 23 December 2013 02:19

Article by Ross Fitzgerald

IF the High Court sends West Australians back to the polls in the new year, we will see the formation of some very odd political alliances among the smaller parties as they wheel and deal for preferences. The recent WA Senate election certainly showed minor parties could win one and possibly two seats if they had the right preference deal in place.

In the past, minor parties and independents have been elected to the Senate via clever or lucky preference arrangements. The habit of Labor and the Coalition of preferencing religious parties and individuals above mainstream parties saw the likes of Brian Harradine hold the balance of power in the Senate for many years. It was also responsible for the election of Family First’s Steve Fielding and the Democratic Labour Party’s John Madigan.

Now minor parties can get elected almost by default. If too many minor parties preference another minor party high up on their group voting ticket, either because that party is perceived to have a neutral political affiliation or to have no chance of winning, this can actually get them up. The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party in Victoria “stole” the last Senate seat at the September election in this way.

What made the election of a candidate who was a political ingenue all the more interesting was how billionaire Clive Palmer immediately tried to woo Motoring Enthusiast senator-elect Ricky Muir to form some sort of coalition to block Tony Abbott’s legislative agenda. But if that seemed a bit rich, just watch Palmer wheel and deal with the other minor parties in the run-up to another WA Senate election. Who knows what he will be promising then?

Already we’ve seen minor parties such as the Republican Party hitting the phones trying to lock in preference arrangements before the High Court has even considered whether a new election will be called. The Republican Party’s avuncular spokesman, Peter Consandine, claims to have locked in half his preferences. Given that his GVTs for almost all states at the September election were lodged by the Liberal Democratic Party’s NSW senator-elect David Leyonhjelm, many minor party co-ordinators in the future will be clearly wanting some guarantees in place.

Leyonhjelm is proving to be as hard to pin down after an election as before it. Leyonhjelm, who ran on a ticket of the legalisation of guns, gay marriage and drugs, is now reported to be trying to make a formal arrangement with right-wing religious party Family First. It’s difficult to imagine how any self-respecting civil libertarian party could possibly continue to claim to be that and sit on the crossbenches in an alliance with the religious Right. And what must the wholesome folk at Family First think about this?

Leyonhjelm owes his seat in the Senate to the fact thousands of people in NSW mistook his Liberal Democratic Party for the Liberal Party of Australia. His vote in NSW jumped from 1.5 per cent in the 2010 federal election to 9 per cent at the September one. In the ballot for positions on the Senate ticket, he drew to the left of the Liberal Party in all states except Queensland, where he drew to the right of the Libs. In all states his vote rose – except in Queensland, where it fell to 0.69 per cent – which is probably his true rating around the country.

It’s crystal clear that, intentionally or not, his party is being elected on the coat-tails of the Liberal Party, and if Leyonhjelm is allowed to run the LDP with its current name in any rescheduled WA Senate election his poll position on the ballot paper could well decide if he takes yet another seat from the Liberal Party.

It seems to me that the Australian Electoral Commission needs to act now to force Leyonhjelm to make sufficient changes to the name of his party to stop this farcical undermining of people’s true voting intentions. And while the Electoral Commission is at it, how did it ever let Leyonhjelm register another of his feeder parties (the Outdoor Recreation Party) with an abbreviated name on the ballot paper of “Stop The Greens”? It would be fascinating indeed to see how the commission would react to a group trying to set up a party called “Stop the Leyonhjelm”.

This brings us to the question of whether the WA Electoral Commission should be insisting on parties signing some form of guarantee that says they will preference other parties the way they have agreed on the phone and through email. After all, these are contracts political parties make with one another that clearly shape the next federal parliament. They are essentially contracts that could shape the future of Australia and therefore should have some privilege attaching to them. If a party lodges a group voting ticket at the 11th hour that is different from what it has agreed on, an aggrieved party should have rights to enforce that agreement – even after the commission’s deadline.

It is widely known that Leyonhjelm made an agreement with the Australian Sex Party in Victoria at the September election, via a series of phone calls and emails, to preference that party’s candidate, Fiona Patten, high up on the GVT for his Liberal Democratic Party, as well as three other feeder parties that he was acting for, including the Republican Party.

In return, Patten was to preference him high up in NSW. When the GVTs were lodged, Leyonhjelm had reneged on his promises by not submitting his GVTs by the deadline. This arguably caused Patten to lose out on the last Senate seat in Victoria to the Motoring Enthusiast Party.

Leyonhjelm’s excuses for not submitting were first that the Victorian Electoral Commission’s fax was not working. Then he claimed that it was his fax that did not work and, finally, that he dialled the wrong fax number. Yet Leyonhjelm seemed to manage these complex operations in all the other states.

Whether we will find out the truth of what happened remains to be seen, but to stop anyone in the future from welshing on an agreed preference deal with another party simply because the time for lodgments of GVTs has expired, the Australian Electoral Commission needs to step in and make a new ruling for the coming WA Senate election.

If a party’s GVT is different from what was promised, such a party should be penalised under the Australian Electoral Act. We still may see the election of one or two minor parties in the Senate, but at least they will have got there through honest and transparent negotiations.

Emeritus professor of history and politics at Griffith University, Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 36 books.

The Weekend Australian, December 21-22, 2013, Inquirer p 20.

Heroic Uruguay deserves a Nobel peace prize for legalising cannabis

Details: Published on Wednesday, 18 December 2013 05:00

Article by Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

'Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale.' Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

The war on the war on drugs is the only war that matters. Uruguay's stance puts the UN and the US to shame
I used to think the United Nations was a harmless talking shop, with tax-free jobs for otherwise unemployed bureaucrats. I now realise it is a force for evil. Its response to a truly significant attempt to combat a global menace – Uruguay's new drug regime – has been to declare that it "violates international law".

To see the tide turn on drugs is like trying to detect a glacier move. But moving it is. Wednesday's statute was introduced by the Uruguayan president, José Mujica, "to free future generations from this plague". The plague was not drugs as such but the "war" on them, which leaves the world's youth at the mercy of criminal traffickers and random imprisonment. Mujica declares himself a reluctant legaliser but one determined "to take users away from clandestine business. We don't defend marijuana or any other addiction, but worse than any drug is trafficking."

Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale. Users must be over 18 and registered Uruguayans. While small quantities can be grown privately, firms will produce cannabis under state licence and prices will be set to undercut traffickers. The country does not have a problem on the scale of Colombia or Mexico – just 10% of adults admit to using cannabis – and stresses that the measure is experimental.

This measured approach is still way in advance even of American states such as Colorado and Washington, which have legalised recreational as well as medical cannabis consumption, but not production. While the Uruguayan law does not cover other drugs, by depriving traffickers of an estimated 90% of their market, the hope is both to undermine the bulk of the criminal market and to diminish the gateway effect of traffickers pushing harder drugs.

Mujica's courage should not be underrated. His is a gently old-fashioned country, and two-thirds of those polled oppose the move, though this is up from 3% a decade ago. In addition some pro-legalisation lobbies object to his de facto nationalisation. An open question is whether a state cartel will be as effective as a regulated free market. But the drugs chief, Julio Calzada, is blunt: "For 50 years, we have tried to tackle the drug problem with only one tool – penalisation – and that has failed. As a result, we now have more consumers, bigger criminal organisations, money laundering, arms trafficking and collateral damage."

The response of the UN's International Narcotics Control Board has been to incant futile bromides. The move, says its chief Raymond Yans, would "endanger young people and contribute to the earlier onset of addiction". It would also be in breach of a "universally agreed and internationally endorsed treaty". Yet the UN admits that half a century of attempted suppression has led to 162m cannabis users worldwide, or 4% of the total adult population .

The 78-year-old Mujica notes the irony that many of his South American contemporaries agree with him, but only after leaving office. They include Brazil's Fernando Cardoso, Mexico's Ernesto Zedillo and Colombia's César Gaviria, all of whom have now called for the decriminalisation of the drug market so that they can begin to regulate a trade whose feuding operators are killing thousands of people each year. The value of the drugs trade is second only to the trade in arms. Yet the US resists decriminalisation so it can continue to fight cocaine and opium production in Latin America and Afghanistan, to avoid confronting the real enemy: a domestic consumption that is out of control.

For all this, the futility of suppression is leading to laws crumbling across the west. Twenty US states have legalised medical cannabis. California this year narrowly rejected taxing consumption (turning down an estimated $1.3bn in annual revenue) and may yet relent. Drug use is accepted across most of Latin America and, de facto, Europe. Even in Britain, where possession can be punished by five years in prison, just 0.2% of cases prosecuted result in such a sentence. The most intensive drug users are said to be in the state's own jails. The law has effectively collapsed.

The difficulty now is to resolve the inconsistency of enforcers "turning a blind eye" to consumption while leaving supply (and thus marketing) untaxed and unregulated in the hands of drug traffickers. This is little short of a state subsidy to organised crime. Indulgence may save the police and the courts from the cost of enforcement, but it leaves every high street open to massive cross-jeopardy, from cannabis to hard drug use.

Ending this inconsistency requires action from legislators. Yet they remain seized by a lethal mix of taboo, tribalism and fear of the media. British policy on all intoxicants and narcotics (from booze to benzodiazepines) is chaotic and dangerous. The government on Thursday admitted its inability to control "legal highs", new ones being invented every week. It is running round back-street laboratories waving bans and arrest warrants like the Keystone Cops.

The catastrophe of death and anarchy that failed drug suppression has brought to Mexico and to other narco-states makes the west's obsessive war on terror seem like a footling sideshow. The road out of this darkness is now being charted not in the old world but in the new, whose heroic legislators deserve to be awarded a Nobel peace prize. It is they who have taken on the challenge of fighting the one world war that really matters – the war on the war on drugs. It is significant that the bravest countries are also the smallest. Thank heavens for small states.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/12/heroic-uruguay-deserves-nobel-prize-cannabis

Uruguay set to become first country to legalize marijuana trade

Details: Published on Saturday, 14 December 2013 23:57

Article by MALENA CASTALDI

(Reuters) - Uruguay's Senate is expected to pass a law on Tuesday making the small South American nation the world's first to allow its citizens to grow, buy and smoke marijuana.

The pioneering government-sponsored bill establishes state regulation of the cultivation, distribution and consumption of marijuana and is aimed at wresting the business from criminals.

Cannabis consumers would be allowed to buy a maximum of 40 grams (1.4 ounces) each month from state-regulated pharmacies as long as they are over the age of 18 and registered on a government database that will monitor their monthly purchases.

Uruguayans would also be allowed to grow up to six plants of marijuana in their homes a year, or as much as 480 grams (about 17 ounces). They could also set up smoking clubs of 15 to 45 members that could grow up to 99 plants per year.

The bill, which opinion polls show is unpopular, passed the lower chamber of Congress in July and is expected to easily pass the Senate on the strength of the ruling coalition's majority.

Uruguay's attempt to undo drug trafficking is being followed closely in Latin America where the legalization of some narcotics is being increasingly seen by regional leaders as a possible way to end the violence spawned by the cocaine trade.

"Our country can't wait for international consensus on this issue," Senator Roberto Conde of the governing Broad Front left-wing coalition said as Senate debate opened. He said organized crime had turned Uruguay into a transit country for drugs, such as marijuana from Paraguay and cocaine from Bolivia.

Rich countries debating legalization of pot are also watching the bill, which philanthropist George Soros has supported as an "experiment" that could provide an alternative to the failed U.S.-led policies of the long "war on drugs."

The bill gives authorities 120 days to set up a drug control board that will regulate cultivation standards, fix the price and monitor consumption.

The use of marijuana is legal in Uruguay, a country of 3.3 million that is one of the most liberal in Latin America, but cultivation and sale of the drug are not.

Other countries have decriminalized marijuana possession and the Netherlands allows its sale in coffee shops, but Uruguay will be the first nation to legalize the whole chain from growing the plant to buying and selling its leaves.

Several countries such as Canada, the Netherlands and Israel have legal programs for growing medical cannabis but do not allow cultivation of marijuana for recreational use.

Last year, the U.S. states of Colorado and Washington passed ballot initiatives that legalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana.

Uruguay's leftist president, Jose Mujica, defends his initiative as a bid to regulate and tax a market that already exists but is run by criminals.

"We've given this market as a gift to the drug traffickers and that is more destructive socially than the drug itself, because it rots the whole of society," the 78-year-old former guerrilla fighter told Argentine news agency Telam.

NOT ALL CONVINCED

Uruguay is one of the safest Latin American countries with little of the drug violence or other violence seen in countries such as Colombia and Mexico. Yet one-third of Uruguay's prison inmates are serving time on charges related to narcotics trafficking.

Even though it is set to clear the Senate, the legislation faces fierce opposition from conservatives and Mujica has yet to convince a majority of Uruguayans that it is a good idea.

According to a recent opinion poll by Equipos Consultores, 58 percent of Uruguayans oppose legalizing pot, although that is down from 68 percent in a previous survey in June.

Critics say legalization will not only increase consumption but open the door to the use of harder drugs than marijuana, which according to government statistics is used by 8 percent of Uruguayans on a regular basis.

"Competing with drug traffickers by offering marijuana at a lower price will just increase the market for a drug that has negative effects on public health," said Senator Alfredo Solari of the conservative Colorado Party.

If it works, the legislation is expected to fuel momentum for wider legalization of marijuana elsewhere, including the United States and in Europe. Decriminalization of all drug possession by Portugal in 2001 is held up as a success for reducing drug violence while not increasing drug use.

"This development in Uruguay is of historic significance," said Ethan Nadelmann, founder of the Drug Policy Alliance, a leading sponsor of drug policy reform partially funded by Soros through his Open Society Foundation.

"Uruguay is presenting an innovative model for cannabis that will better protect public health and public safety than does the prohibitionist approach," Nadelmann said.

(Reporting by Malena Castaldi; Writing by Anthony Boadle; Editing by Kieran Murray, Paul Simao and Eric Beech)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/10/us-uruguay-marijuana-idUSBRE9B905A20131210

How a faulty fax machine threatens the micro-party alliance

Details: Published on Saturday, 14 December 2013 23:48

Article by JACKSON STILES

The micro-party alliance enjoyed success at the September federal election, but it now faces threats from electoral reform and a bitter spat that erupted over a dodgy fax machine.
Much has been made of the alliance of pint-sized parties that marched on the ballot box at the September federal election, plundering Senate seats and dashing Liberal hopes of stability in the upper house.

It appears that the big parties won’t stand for it. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has been re-formed to investigate the 2013 election. With only two minor party representatives – a Greens Senator with voting rights and a non-voting Senator from the Democratic Labour Party – it is unlikely to report favourably on the small party successes of late.

Liberal Party Senator Michael Ronaldson asked the committee to investigate senate voting reform and reportedly has support from across the parliament.

But reforms to the electoral process may not be required to curb the influence of the micro-party alliance. It may be self-destructing. At least two factions, led by old rivals David Leyonhjelm and Glenn Druery, have emerged to shatter the illusion of harmony.

Leyonhjelm’s party, the Liberal Democrats, was not allowed to join the league of preference swappers led by Druery at the recent election – a ban he endured with very few ill-effects.
In power, and that’s all that matters

Senator-elect Leyonhjelm, who won his seat for NSW on a whopping 9.5 per cent of primary votes, was certainly no friend of Druery, the so-called ‘preference whisperer’, although they were colleagues in the past.

“We don’t like the fact that Glenn sees himself as a kingmaker,” said Leyonhjelm. “None of his clients got elected. And the one he tried to stop, which was me, did get elected.”

Druery maintained that the decision to exclude Leyonhjelm was the will of the majority and not a personal one, but the Sex Party was not so sure.

“My gut feeling on that would be that it was the falling out between David and Glenn that created that scenario,” said its president Fiona Patten.

The rift dates back to their joint involvement in the Outdoor Recreation Party, which Druery helped form in 1996, and which he said was hijacked by Leyonhjelm.

“It was originally my baby, and they got control of it and changed its name to Stop the Greens, which it was never intended to be,” said Druery.

Leyonhjelm retorted that Druery was a failed Senate candidate for the party in 2010 who staged a power grab that got him kicked out.

He also lost another former ally in the Sex Party. They had previously dealt closely, and preferenced each other highly at the 2010 election because of their similarly relaxed views on many issues, including pornography. But a bitter preference dispute in the lead up to this year’s election ruined the relationship.

The Sex Party is still angry that its Victorian Senate candidate Fiona Patten did not reap preferences as promised from the four parties that Leyonhjelm seemed to control: the Liberal Democrats, the Outdoor Recreation Party (Stop the Greens), the Smokers Rights Party and the Republican Party of Australia.

“We did an agreement, which was witnessed by quite a few people in the office, to go to them in NSW and in return they would go to us in Victoria,” said the Sex Party’s registered officer Robbie Swan. “He got a pretty high primary vote as well because clearly a lot thought he was the Liberal Party. And he was number one on the ticket. So he had everything going for him.”

‘A fax ate my homework’

Patten was denied these preferences because of a comedy of errors that resulted in Leyonhjelm failing to submit the group voting tickets of each of the four parties. He blamed this on a rickety fax machine, a looming deadline and a poor decision to trade preferences right up until the midday cut off point on 17 August. But the Sex Party has been hinting at a more sinister explanation ever since.

“Maybe it was a f-ck up, but why tell me three different stories,” said Patten. “His first story was that the electoral commission’s fax machine was broken. The next was that his fax machine had a paper jam. And the third was that he rang the wrong number.”

Leyonhjelm said he and his team went on trading preferences “right through the night”, underestimated how long it would take to write down the 50-plus preferences of four parties in numerous states, left it until 11:55am to send the documents because the fax machine chewed them several times, and then missed the deadline because his wife Amanda keyed in the wrong fax number for the electoral commission.

To complicate matters, Leyonhjelm said the time on the transmission record he gave to the Sex Party to prove his innocence was 15 minutes slow, making it seem as if he had tried only once to send the documents at 11:40am and then given up with plenty of time to spare.

Understandably, the Sex Party thought all this sounded a bit suss.
A new alliance?

But while Leyonhjelm has lost some friends, his strong affiliation with several other parties helped win him a seat for New South Wales, and also secured the Liberal Democrats relatively high primary votes in South Australia, Tasmania and Western Australia.

While it was legal, though somewhat unconventional, for Leyonhjelm to be the registered officer of three parties (Liberal Democrats, Smokers Rights and Outdoor Recreation) simultaneously, it was his “friendly” relationship with a fourth, the Republican Party of Australia, that others thought was most curious.

“David Leyonhjelm appeared to have control of that party,” said Swan, “in that he could offer preferences for it.”

So friendly was he with the party’s leader, Peter Consandine, that Leyonhjelm said he was entrusted with a rubber stamp of Consandine’s signature in order to lodge to the party’s group voting ticket – a task he obviously failed to accomplish in Victoria.

The electoral act states that to make the signature of another person on a group voting ticket is forgery, but Leyonhjelm insisted the electoral commission permitted his use of the signature stamp.

“According to what the electoral commission told Peter, which he told me, it’s perfectly acceptable,” he said.

But Fiona Patten speculated that the use of stamped signatures is “completely illegal”.

FionaHTV

Photo credit: The Sex Party’s Fiona Patten handing out how-to-vote cards at the 2013 federal election. Photo: AAP

http://thenewdaily.com.au/news/2013/12/12/micro-party-alliance-ailing-amid-tit-tat-infighting/

Another Hospital Admission: New Laws Urgently Needed

Details: Published on Friday, 06 December 2013 09:45

Yet another hospital admission today after a man allegedly took a new psychoactive substance called ‘Marley’, is being cited as further evidence that prohibition is not working and that a new approach by government is urgently required.

Fiona Patten, CEO of the Eros Association, said that the social tonics industry had put out an urgent alert as far and as wide as it could, upon first hearing of the alleged side effects of this substance. “We urged anyone in the industry to call others and warn them that under no circumstances should they sell this product or anything like it”, she said. “I believe that this single action probably did more to stop the sale of this product than anything else the authorities could do.”

Ms Patten said that the Victorian government needed to set in place a regulatory regime that allowed sellers to prove that a social tonic was not toxic. “Many of these products are no stronger than a couple of wines or a few beers and the government should allow these mild psychoactive products to be properly tested and then carefully regulated like alcohol”, she said. “If we had a system like this in place, Marley would probably not be in the market place today and people we would not see people being hospitalised”.

Statement regarding the New South Wales Bill: Crimes Amendment (Zoe’s Law) Bill 2013

Details: Published on Thursday, 28 November 2013 22:46

With abortion laws in Australia under increasing pressure from conservative groups, Zoe’s Law raises the stakes for both sides.

Eros reseacher, Nick Wallis reviews the circumstances around the proposed law and the people on both sides.

This Bill arose after an awful tragedy on NSW roads, where an intoxicated driver hit a car, resulting in the miscarriage of Brodie Donegan's 32 week-old foetus. Brodie had wanted to call her child, “Zoe”, hence the title of this Bill. The intoxicated driver was charged with grievous bodily harm under the Crimes Act, but was not charged with a separate offence for the death of Zoe. This issue is understandably emotive, given the circumstances surrounding the legislation. It is of the utmost importance to carefully look at the potential consequences of legislation, especially if it is being pushed through parliament with a highly emotional narrative. Zoe's Law was originally introduced by the Reverend Fred Nile, leader of the Christian Democratic Party and member of the NSW Upper House. Nile is a known opponent of women's right to access abortion. The question of where life begins should not be separated from the question of where the state's jurisdiction ends. The Christian Democratic Party believe that life begins at conception. Importantly though, they also believe that the state's jurisdiction should uphold this interpretation of where life begins through the use of the law. The reach of the powers of the state should never be endless, because there are many complex and difficult issues which are better solved through other means than rigid legislation. This is particularly the case for issues surrounding reproduction. This is a highly emotional and very personal issue for people. Rigid legislation around this issue can too easily lead to presumptuous rulings in cases brought to court, where a person would have been better looked after by a more personal and emotionally involved structure. The Bill currently sitting before the NSW parliament is a much watered-down version of Nile's original version. It tries to focus on the specific issue of creating a separate crime for the destruction of a late-term foetus through non-medical means, clearly trying to avoid the issues of infringing on women's reproductive freedoms. Potential problems with the Bill would arise in the interpretation of various terms, especially since abortion is not a well protected right in New South Wales law currently. Reaching the states' jurisdiction inside another person's body and suggesting that the two should be treated as equals in the eyes of the law, especially in criminal law, creates a concerning precedent. Future legislators may extend the definitions or a court may interpret certain terms in a more broad manner, capturing people who would not have been the original intended targets of the legislation. This legislation hasn't been well received by groups such as the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions, the NSW Bar Association (representatives of the state's barristers), Women's Legal Services, the NSW Community Legal Centre and the Australian Medical Association. Many of these groups believe the current law is adequate and have expressed concerns about the potential for unintended consequences if Zoe's Law makes it through parliament. The Australian Sex Party strongly support women's reproductive autonomy and feel very wary of legislation that seeks to reach the states jurisdiction inside people's bodies. This case is undoubtedly tragic and the judiciary should be trusted to be able to recognise this and prosecute appropriately using the tools they currently have, which a large number of legal groups have said are adequate.

Standing up to the politically-correct bully boys

Details: Published on Monday, 11 November 2013 23:04

FREEDOM of speech has never been more threatened in Australia. A raft of ostensibly well-meaning anti-discrimination legislation is casting a pall of censorship and political correctness over the nation.

Everywhere you look some person or group is metaphorically taping someone else's mouth shut.

Not so long ago a member of the Greens attempted to muzzle the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell, for daring to instruct NSW Catholic MPs that therapeutic cloning and stem-cell research are morally wrong. While many of us disagree with Pell's views, it is wrong to attempt to silence him.

The regular stoush between federal and state attorneys-general over the censorship of "terrorist" books and magazines demonstrates how censorious politics has become.
But if we ban, for example, Islamic books that praise terrorist acts, or if we prohibit people from reading Mein Kampf, how can we debate the horrors of Islamic and Christian fundamentalism or Adolf Hitler's evil influence on world history?

It's not only governments applying the gag. Business and industry are proving to be rather adept as well.

Fiona Patten of the Australian Sex Party couldn't believe her ears when she was called by commercial TV's regulator during the federal election campaign and told that a TV ad about her party's euthanasia policy was banned.

It told her that advocating a policy of legalised "euthanasia" in a political advertisement could cause people to commit suicide.

If you're trying to get a message out in Queensland via outdoor advertising, don't say anything even vaguely sexual. As a result of pressure from the Australian Christian Lobby, the Queensland government has ordered an enquiry into whether there is too much sex on advertising billboards.

If our democratic system is to survive, the right to speak the unvarnished truth needs to be nurtured, even protected.

Ross Fitzgerald is the author of 36 books. His erotic novel of the year 'Soaring' is now available as an e-Book.

The Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2013, p 23.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/standing-up-to-the-politciallycorrect-bully-boys/story-fni0cwl5-1226757595694

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