Rather than take responsibility for a difficult economy and butchered Budget, employment minister, Eric Abetz, has today blamed Labor:
Unemployment has hit its highest level in a decade at 6 per cent with 720,000 people now out of work. The last time that many people were on the dole queue was in the late 1990s. It is a big challenge for a new Government that’s promised to create a million jobs over five years. The Employment Minister Eric Abetz has told AM the Coalition has a plan but the Labor/Green alliance in the Senate is blocking reforms. Mr Abetz also says he will leave legislation on industrial awards to the independent umpire.
Don’t get me wrong. MB is highly critical of the selective approach of the Senate. But the Budget is the Government’s and had it been passed swiftly would just as likely have resulted in further falls in confidence. Indeed, confidence began to rise as it became clear that many cuts were going to be blocked.
This followed last night’s appearance by Minister Abetz on The Project in which he raised the notion that there is a link between abortion and breast cancer. Guy Rundle sums it up nicely today at Crikey:
Revived by Abetz on The Project last night, the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis — the suggestion that having an abortion results in a higher risk for breast cancer — has a long history in Australia. One of its decade-long champions has been Babette Francis, chair of the Endeavour Forum, one of the myriad of quasi-independent front groups set up around Bob Santamaria and the National Civic Council in the 1970s, and hosts of the World Congress on Families conference, where this stuff will be aired.
The Australian anti-abortion movement latched onto the abortion-breast cancer hypothesis more strongly than elsewhere for one simple reason — abortion, once it began to be de facto decriminalised in Australia, steadily acquired substantial public support. In the United States, it’s at the centre of the culture wars; in Australia, by the ’90s, it was decisively shoved to one side. The anti-abortion lobby was then faced with a choice — they could stick to their guns and maintain their religious-ethical objects without hope of victory, or engage in subterfuge and propaganda. Guess which?
Rundle notes that this anti-science and irrational agenda setting is becoming characteristic of the Government. The current raft of thought bubble policies, inconsistent approaches and transparent ideology leaves little room to see them as anything else.
