MY APPLICATION FOR A JOB AS A HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSIONER

I wish to inform my readers (both of you) that I have applied for a new job as a human rights commissioner. My application took the form of an email to the Attorney General, Senator George Brandis, that is copied below.

I sent it on January 30. That's over 2 weeks ago. Though Senator Brandis has been a bit slow off the blocks in replying, I expect it is because he likes to take his time on documents of this importance, and does not wish to lose any sleep afterwards worrying over the precise wording he used, and whether or not it was the best possible.

If either of you is interested in exploring this further, it relates to The IPA Wish-list Reviewed, over at my other blog, Noah's Rainbow Serpent.

Senator George Brandis,
Attorney General
Parliament House,
Canberra.

Dear Senator Brandis,

I would like to apply for a job as a Human Rights Commissioner.

I understand from reading recent reports in the media that these jobs are within your purview, patronage and dispensation. I am also aware
that they require no particular or specific credentials, qualifications or experience. This is most helpful in my case.

As well, the money is also not bad at all in my humble opinion. I understand that it is $320,000 per year, plus the understandable and of course inevitably well-earned, perks.

It would help me however, if your office could provide me with details of these perks, specifically with reference to the super scheme. I
assume that after 8 years’ service or on retirement (whichever comes sooner) I will be eligible for a hefty lump sum, or for an annual
pension of around 90% of my $320,000 per year, (ie $288,000 per year), 95% of which in turn will become an entitlement for my wife should I pre-decease her. This would be $273,600 per year, which I am sure she would find most agreeable.

I just asked her. She does.

Let me also state in support of my application that I am all for human rights. In fact I believe that no rights are more important than those human ones. And I am no ignoramus. I can spot a human right a mile off; even when it is running with a mob of non-human rights, or for that matter, in a pack of human wrongs.

It has been said recently by one of your newest and most deeply thoughtful commissioners, that (the right to) private property is the most fundamental human right of all. I thoroughly agree. But of course, it is not the only one, even though it may turn out that it was the only one he could think of at the time. Perhaps the only one
he can think of even today.

But I strikes me that there is at least one other human right, namely the right we taxpayers have to know where our money is going; what it is being spent on; who it is being passed to on the quiet; stuff like that.

Consequently, I ask for the above information because I believe that I have a human right to it, without having to trawl though a truckload of Senate Estimates Committee and other reports. And I am sure you would agree.

Finally, let me assure you that this letter is written in no partisan spirit. I am a swinging voter.

Yours faithfully,

Ian MacDougall

A NEW MASS MOVEMENT IS UNDERWAY IN AUSTRALIA

The last mass movement I participated in was at the time of the war in Vietnam (1964-75). In Australia, there were a number of antiwar organisations, with a variety of programs and strategies. It all culminated in the single Moratorium movement, which was modelled on the US movement of the same name, and it staged some of the biggest street marches and demonstrations this country has ever seen.

This morning I rode up to the front gate of our cattle property in northwest NSW, and attached a sign to the gate. It says 'Lock the Gate', and its intention is to inform passers-by that coal-seam gas prospectors and drillers' forward scouts are not welcome, and will be treated as trespassers.

My wife Jenny tells me that the rural supplies store in our local town is doing a brisk trade in these signs. 

This is how a mass movement begins.

Against it is the NSW Government led by Barry O'Farrell. He is not relying on mass support: rather on mass apathy. His government is in cheerleader mode for the Santos-led coal seam gas mob, who stand to make squillions out of it if they can just get everyone in the cities on side. The farmers and graziers living above the Great Artesian Basin are already massively off side.

O'Farrell's problem is that coal seam gas is not the only energy resource in sight, and it has problems: technical, environmental and therefore, political.

My specific objections to coal seam gas I will leave for my next post.