Monthly Archives: June 2012
Why Amend Civil Unions At All?
Today the Queensland Government announced something that Queenslanders and those interested in politics and gay rights were probably not expecting. The Premier, Campbell Newman was widely expected and feared to be about to say that there would be a full repeal of the civil unions laws instituted by former Treasurer and Deputy Premier, Andrew Fraser. This didn’t happen, though pretty much everything but a full repeal of the laws, a step toward marriage equality that the state finally took just months ago was announced today by the Queensland Premier.
It was identified before the March election that an incoming LNP government would look at repealing the laws introduced to the Queensland parliament by the former MLA for the electorate of Mt Coot-tha and it was, as said, pretty much viewed as a fait accompli by advocates, indeed just about everyone in Queensland you would expect.
Then today, we got a bit of a shock, less than a half shock, but a shock nonetheless. A full repeal is not going to happen, but the announcement has been a hollow victory for supporters of same-sex marriage and equal rights for same-sex couples with the announcement pointing toward taking a pretty big step back from heading toward marriage equality, a step which the commonwealth will inevitably have to take with marriage being within the federal jurisdiction.
What will happen now is that the Civil Partnerships Act will be amended by the LNP Government to remove the provisions that “mimic” same-sex marriage. Couples will still be able to register their relationships by signing documentation papers which will provide acknowledgement that their relationship exists but they will not be able to have a state sanctioned ceremony that was allowed under the provisions brought into law by the Fraser legislation.
Unfortunately, the Christian lobby saw it as an affront to have a special ceremony legislated for by the state which they saw as being akin to gay marriage even though people in these relationships surely have not seen it as such. Further, the ceremony itself was a voluntary act and out of the 609 civil partnerships registered in Queensland since the legislative change, a massive 21 (sarcasm fully freaking intended) opted to have that voluntary ceremony.
Did churches have to involve themselves in these ceremonies at all? No. Were those celebrants out there who hold religious views compelled to preside over same-sex marriage ceremonies? No.
So why does the Christian lobby fear something that isn’t marriage and isn’t foisted upon them by the state? The answer is likely just that, fear. A type of fear of love between a man and another man or a woman and another woman, not a scary concept at all, though perhaps it is to an institution that has continued to struggle for relevancy with declining levels of adherence.
The reality too is that same-sex marriage, though a while away yet is inevitable and that too is likely to not call upon churches to hold actual marriage ceremonies within their hallowed halls.
The government really shouldn’t have bowed to the church lobby when they were not being impacted on at all, but the outcome isn’t altogether awful and is at least a half-relief for people in these equally special relationships where their love is no different to your love for your wife, husband, boyfriend or girlfriend.
Coalition Asylum Policy: I’ll See Your Malaysian Solution and Raise You Denying Refugee Claims
Policies on people coming to live in Australia, whether in desperate circumstances or as migrants hoping to make the most of opportunities that Australia has to offer continue to veer toward the insane and abhorrent, even appealing to the xenophobic in some cases. Under the Prime Ministership of Julia Gillard the ALP veered even to the right of the Liberal Party on asylum seeker policy, thankfully failing in getting through the so-called ‘Malaysian Solution’ because of two disparate political parties, the Greens and the Liberal/National Party Coalition.
In roughly the same period of time, we have also been reminded that the Coalition would also like to see asylum seeker boats turned around if safe to do so, slammed by many.
But today we have had the Liberal Party remind us again that temporary protection visa’s, TPV’s for short would be reinstated under a future Coalition Government.
The granting of TPV’s was used as part of the Howard Government ‘Pacific Solution’ which saw boat arrivals dramatically reduced in the early 2000’s until the government lost power in 2007.
The announcement went even further too with a new policy announcement by Opposition Leader Tony Abbott and his Shadow Immigration Minister Scott Morrison.
Today it was announced at the press conference held by the two representatives of the Coalition that asylum seekers arriving without identity papers or a passport should not be given refugee status in Australia. The exact wording being that there would be a “strong presumption” that people arriving in Australia without any form of identification would not be given refugee status.
The stance on TPV’s and on the denial of refugee status to people arriving without documentation is problematic.
Visas granting temporary protection assume that in the event a conflict ends within a nation where a refugee has come to Australia from that they will no longer face persecution in that country and in many cases this is just not the reality, persecution of particular ethnic groups can still continue even when broader tensions have ceased.
Of course though, people who wish to return to their country of origin, if they feel it safe to do so, should be able to make that journey home of their own volition.
There too are problems with denying refugee status to asylum seekers that arrive in our waters without papers which will make them more easily identifiable to Australian authorities assessing their claims.
The first is that in many cases their papers are confiscated by the very people who are plying this horrific trade in human misery, the people smugglers themselves.
Second, where will these asylum seekers be sent when there claims are denied by the government because of having no papers? They cannot be refouled simply because they didn’t have papers, they would need to be sent to another country where they would be free from persecution at least until the veracity of their claims was able to be properly assessed even if made much harder by the lack of documentation.
Put simply, this policy takes the Malaysian asylum seeker deal and says, “Hah I have a stronger hand. So much stronger that it will make yours look like child’s play”.
Very few people deny that the trade of people smugglers needs to be broken, it sure does. But this is simply not the way to do it, using people in this situation as a political football. Both the asylum seeker deal with Malaysia and this increasingly strengthened Coalition policy are und0ubtedly deterrents, but they are the wrong kind of deterrent that could see people needing protection denied that.
What is needed is global action as well as a regi0nal solution where the processing of refugee claims in countries of origin are sped up through concerted global action involving all nations and the agencies charged with assessing refugee claims.
More countries in our region too need to urgently sign and ratify the Refugee Convention so that asylum seeker numbers can be shared around the region more while we still do our fair share.
Indeed an Australian solution is also needed where we increase the numbers we take directly from conflict hot spots and from camps in our region before people get on incredibly shoddy vessels putting themselves at risk of perishing at sea.
It’s a tricky situation but the one-upmanship has to stop and solutions which help vulnerable people and convince them against making expensive and unsafe boat journeys simply have to trump policies which above anything punish these people and put them in further danger.
The Disappearing Act That is the NDIS
The National Disability Insurance Scheme, NDIS for short that the Productivity Commission recommended in August last year was seen as the hero that could help people with a disability with the immense costs of living with an impairment. It promised to do this through meeting the costs of treatment and equipment and aligning the states and territories with the same level of assistance as fellow states. It was received well by both sides of politics at the federal level after being instigated by the Gillard Government through Bill Shorten, at the time the Parliamentary Secretary for Disabilities. Both sides of politics and the Greens committed to supporting the policy idea. Not only that, the states, all of them at least in principle agree and continue to agree with the policy, even if some of them believe that they simply do not have the cash to contribute to what could be a game-changer.
The idea then headed to the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) for discussion with the states who are needed on-board as service providers in the disability sector are currently under the purview of individual states rather than the commonwealth government.
It was just ahead of the debate commencing at COAG when the cracks started to appear in the bipartisanship and commonwealth-state agreement on the need to go forward with a the scheme. The federal Opposition committed to the NDIS, but only when the budget was back in “strong surplus” and not that long after, both before and at COAG the state consensus appeared headed for a small crevass, with in-principle support (read far from certain delivery) even starting to sound shaky.
Nonetheless, through all this time the ALP Government continued to hold up the NDIS as a must do and a great achievement of a Labor Government despite not even a trial or a strong agreement with the states to work toward a timeline or concrete progression on trials and implementation frameworks having been agreed to.
By then, the hopes of those with a disability and their carers and families had well and truly been raised, certainly too high for a policy that was and still is just a policy and at this stage a small step further to fruition.
At the NDIS rally the week before the budget and for a time before that, the Prime Minister and her government raised expectations even further, mentioning the insurance scheme at just about every opportunity, in just about every list of talking points for MP’s and ministers.
The highest level of hope was raised just 8 days from the budget at the Every Australian Counts rally in Sydney where the Prime Minister spoke, announcing that the NDIS would commence a year earlier with four launch sites providing services to 10,000 people with a severe and permanent disability, going to 20,000 the following financial year.
But the Prime Minister said we must wait until the budget for the digits on the funding allocation for the initial roll-out of the disability policy which we found out would be $1 billion over 4 years, $250 million per year for those awful at maths. This is not an insignificant amount of money, but in the scheme of things, a small allocation for the four year period which would need a significant further investment by the future commonwealth government who the Productivity Commission be the sole funder anyway.
Alas, since the budget the crickets have come out in force with the NDIS doing a vanishing act from the political discourse that any illusionist would be happy to achieve in their act. For a government which held up the scheme as a centre-point of their social and broader policy agenda, it has certainly fallen off the radar in a more comprehensive way than any plane that has disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle.
It could certainly be surmised that this amazing Copperfield like disappearing act is down to wrangling between the commonwealth and states over the policy which has spilled out into the public domain and certainly stymied the progress of what is an important, much-needed and well and truly overdue policy response to an issue that has lacked any major attention since de-institutionalisation.
If the National Disability Insurance Scheme really is as powerful and as certain to happen as we were made to believe up until just weeks ago when it was front and centre of the debate then it simply must return to the political discourse in as big a way as it was less than about a month ago.
This could certainly have been avoided by adopting the Productivity Commission recommendation on funding from the outset. The states though could still contribute existing funds allocated to service provision in areas covered by people the Medicare like scheme would capture and provide for.
The question that must now be asked would be, is this just an illusory disappearance from the political landscape of the NDIS or is this a case of a real disappearance without a trace? The cynic would say it leans toward the latter.
Wheelchair Basketball: A Great Paralympic Sport
Time for another lesson in sports that will be a part of the 2012 Paralympic Games in London just 86 days. This time it’s the fast-paced, exciting and skillful game of Wheelchair Basketball.
Wheelchair Basketball is one of the most-watched sports for the disabled and also has one of the highest participation rates worldwide (there are 82 national organisations for the sport worldwide)
HOW PLAYERS ARE CLASSIFIED
In order to be able to play in national and international competitions players are classified on a scale of 1.0-4.5 points with the lower numbers applying to the least functional athletes and the higher numbers to the least impaired athletes.
A team with a total classification point score of no more than 14 is allowed on court at any one time.
PLAYERS
Each team can have up to 12 players with a total of 5 playing on-court at any one time.
THE PLAYING ARENA
One of the amazing things about the sport of Wheelchair Basketball is that it is played on exactly the same-sized court as Basketball for the “able-bods”. The court consists of all the same dimensions from the 3 point line to the height of the hoop and the backboard.
DURATION OF THE GAME
The game consists of four 10 minute quarters with a 15 minute half-time break and 2 minutes between every other quarter.
THE RULES
Play in Wheelchair Basketball is almost identical to that in Basketball with play beginning from the centre of the court with the ball being tossed up by a match official.
The team in possession has 24 seconds to push forward and attempt to score before possession is turned over.
A free-throw is worth 1 point, there is 2 points for a shot outside the field shot zone and 3 points for a shot outside the 3 point area.
The “travelling” rule is invoked when a player touches his or her wheels more than twice after receiving or dribbling the ball. The player must pass, bounce or shoot the ball before touching the wheels again.
An offensive player cannot be in the free-throw lane more than 3 seconds in possession of the ball.
The wheelchair is considered part of the player so it may be used to block a player.
A technical foul has been deemed to have occurred if a player attempts to lift out of their chair and otherwise similar foul rules apply as with Basketball.
DEFENDING CHAMPIONS FROM THE 2008 PARALYMPICS
In the men’s draw the Australian team, known as the Rollers are the defending champions and in the women’s draw the USA are dual-defending Paralympic champions as well as world champions.
A LOOK AT THE GAME
Time to Learn About Sitting Volleyball
With the 2012 London Paralympics getting ever closer by the day and the weekend fast approaching us it’s time to have a look at another sport that will feature at the Paralympics.
This week we take a look at the sport of Sitting Volleyball.
This variation of Volleyball has been a part of the Summer Paralympics since the event in 1980 held in the Netherlands where it was first introduced into the competitive schedule for men. Women’s Sitting Volleyball took a little longer (two decades in fact) before it was introduced at the 2004 Paralympic Games in Athens.
WHO CAN PLAY?
Unlike many other sports for people with a disability, the sport does not classify athletes in a variety of different groupings according to physical disability. Instead, participants in the sport must meet minimal disability requirements as identified by one or more medical practitioners who are sanctioned to determine the level of disability that potential athletes have.
The disability must be permanent and it can include amputees, people with spinal cord injuries, Cerebral Palsy and les autres (‘the others’), that is, people that do not have a disability that fits into other identified categories of impairment.
When classified, participants are either deemed to have one of two levels of disability, either classified as disability (D) or minimal disability (MD). Only two people classified as having minimal disability are allowed in a team.
ON THE COURT
Sitting Volleyball is played between two teams where there are no more than 6 players on the court at any time and no more than 12 are in the entire team.
Each team is only permitted to have one of their two players classed as having minimal disability on the court at any one time.
The players must all sit on the modified Volleyball court where among other things the net is at a lower level (1.15m for men and 1.05m for women), the court is smaller.
The game is commenced like it’s counterpart with a serve.
Front-row players are allowed to block a serve.
Front-row players must have their pelvis in contact with the floor
Defensive players can assist in an attacking move but cannot cross or touch what is known as the attacking line with their pelvis.
Defensive players in attempting to stop a ball from bouncing in their side of the court are allowed to temporarily lift up off the court past the regular pelvis rule.
The ball can only be touched 3 times before it must go over the net into your opponent’s court.
The game at the Paralympic level has an added special player called a ‘libero player’. This team member is a special defensive player who can be “subbed on” during a stop in play to replace a person on the back court. They are identified because they must wear a different coloured uniform to the rest of the team.
HOW TO WIN
The game is best of 5 sets with the first 4 sets requiring 25 points to win and the final set a score of 15 to triumph.
DEFENDING CHAMPIONS
In the men’s competition the defending champion from the 2008 Paralympic Games in Beijing is Iran and in the women’s draw the winner and defending champion from Beijing was the home team, China.
A VIDEO OF THE GAME
Here is a YouTube link showing the fast-paced game that is Sitting Volleyball:
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