Christopher Hitchens on Q&A

He’s a brilliant debater. He knocked Fr Brennan off his perch (who chaired the Human Rights Consultation and came up with — nothing. Hardly surprising that a Catholic priest would decide we shouldn’t have any human rights charter).

Hitchens is paying a visit during the churches’ $1.5 million campaign promoting “Jesus”, which runs until the end of October.

There were so many highlights — read the transcript here, or watch it.

Hitchens on Mother Teresa: … Mother Teresa was endlessly praised for work that most of the time she actually never did. I went to watch her very closely in Calcutta. You don’t mind that she thinks that what Bengal and Calcutta mainly needs is a campaign … against birth control and family planning. Has anyone here ever been to Bengal and concluded that’s what it really needs? That’s what she was really campaigning for … She gives a wonderful impression of being a charitable person. So what Indians need is more missionaries to cure poverty, when everybody knows there’s only one cure for poverty, which is the empowerment of women, which means giving them some control over their reproduction. You name me … a Catholic or Muslim charity that goes into the fields determined to secure the empowerment of women.

Jesuit Fr Frank Brennan on the topic of gays: No, homosexuality is not a sin. It’s a disposition. If you want to argue about whether particular homosexual acts are appropriate for an individual in a moral context, that would require a pastoral discussion with that individual.

I think that’s misleading. The Catechism of the Catholic Church  says:

2357 Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex.  Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity,140 tradition has always declared that “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”141 They are contrary to the natural law …  Under no circumstances can they be approved.

2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

2359 Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

SMH public transport inquiry: final meeting

Went to the final public meeting for the SMH public transport inquiry. There were about 260 people. It was the eight meeting and there was security because “we’ve had bruises” when “high emotions” had flared. “Mostly in suburbs where people have read about trains and want to have them.” There was a demonstration of how the sound bloke would turn the mike off if anyone tried to go over their three minutes of chat time.

The attendees included Brezhnev characters, unionists, the Balmain intelligentsia, feisty articulate pensioners, a bloke who’d worked on the railways from 1948, passionate trainspotters, and CBD workers. A queue of people lined up to make comments or ask questions. For those too shy to go up, you could SMS a question to the MC, Robert Whitehead. It ran about 10 minutes over time.

One bloke said Rees reckoned we couldn’t spend on transport cause we might lose our AAA Rating with Standard & Poor’s. But he said the point of the rating was so the State could get cheaper loans. “So, get the cheaper loans and spend it on public transport

Discrimination against Singles: a woman said she went to buy the Family Funday Sunday rail pass — $2.5o a person — but just for her. The bloke said no, it’s $17 for you. She had to pay it. She said four Singles would take four cars, then, rather than pay $17 each. And when a family takes the train, that only saves one car on the road.

I felt most sorry for the pensioners — having to pay lots for various modes of transport, or having to waste their valuable time by catching cheaper and slower modes (often buses). Shuffling around with their Zimmers, and there aren’t enough ramps at stations either. Cruel after a lifetime of taxpaying service. The maximum pension is $253/week each (couple) or $335 single. Not enough to pay your bills.

There were handouts from EcoTransit Sydney that summed up the main problem: If Nathan Rees’s proposed CBD Metro-to-Roseville  project happens, it will use up a valuable corridor which could be used for better transport for “hundreds of thousands of people every day”. So that’s why commuters should be in a state of outrage. “You can’t put rail tunnels just anywhere under the CBD because of deep building footings, basements and underground car parks.”

Worse, the CBD Metro would stuff up existing services so anyone travelling in from the west or south would have to get off the train and get on the Metro CBD to get to Town Hall or Wynyard! Nightmare!

Why is Rees persisting with the CBD Metro idea? The EcoTransits say they have inside info that it’s to break the unions by starting up a new metro-style rail system “that’s privately operated, un-unionised, run with a minimum of staff …” to “reform the culture” of CityRail. The commuters suggest maybe they should run CityRail properly instead, as there’s a high probability that a CBD Metro would lose money and then the taxpayers would end up footing the bill.

There’s also a new law so the Rees Govt can sell off rail lines.

Also, Newcastle is stuffed with a plan to cut the rail line just five kilometres from the town centre and make everyone get off and catch buses! This will free up lots of waterfront land.

Also, when Rudd was giving out money for transport infrastructure — for long-term and definite plans — NSW didn’t offer up any plans — so it just got $91 million to do a feasibility study for the rubbish CBD Metro. Meanwhile, Victoria got $3200 million and the Gold Coast got $365 million.  NSW has ignored about five comprehensive long-term plans since 2001 — instead, it’s more open to private enterprise just catering to wherever they can make the biggest buck. *Fail*.

The commuter groups said Rees could have shown Rudd “shovel-ready” plans for a North-West and South-West rail links, areas with huge population growth, but he didn’t, and instead floated the CBD Metro idea which didn’t even have any concrete plans ready. So we’re stuffed.

The affable Dr Glazebrook is a transport uber expert who could answer all questions. I wished they’d left the map of the transport system on the screen all night, as I didn’t know what was what off the top of my head.

He said Singapore’s railway system when from nothing to brilliant after just 30 years. After listening at the meetings, he said people want: *more off-peak buses;  an integrated ticket-fare system; and more parking at train stations so they can park after 7am.

Dr Glazebrook said: “Sydney used to have 1500 trams — more than Melbourne has now.” And our train system routes are better than Melbourne as we made Westfield build huge shopping centres next to train stations — Kogarah, Hurstville, Bankstown. But we’ve badly missed out with no trains to Dee Why and Castle Hill. The North-West and South-West have no trains and it’s dire.

“We spend $22.9 billion a year on our cars. It would cost $3.2 billion to make a big different to public transport.”

He said the US funds public transport with sales tax, petrol tax and land tax. France funds it with payroll tax. He said there was a four per cent increase in US users of public transport.

City of Sydney Mayor Clover Moore said we need transport to Green Square and that the bad transport is “affecting our status as a modern global city”. She said the council has to negotiate with more than 11 transport authorities (that all hate each other) to get anything done, so council staff have to spend all their time in meetings.

“Singapore and Shanghai are infesting billions in transport. We have to do this.” She said if Sydney were a sovereign country, we’d have the world’s 50th largest economy.

Get your submissions in by 5pm Thursday, October 8, here. Remember, these plans are good for 2030 — so when you’re a doddery pensioner, you’ll want faster transport and a fairer ticketing system. Metro Madness blog here.

[The SMH MC RW  said the SMH had been asked to establish another 10 inquiries at least — “hospitals, and one on ‘Canberra’!”. He said this was the first one the SMH had done in 180 years, so … The fact there have been so many requests is interesting. People are desperate to be heard by their Govts and feel the weight of the SMH is necessary cause otherwise they’re dismissed. What an indictment.]

My personal views on public transport here.

Ethics classes proposed for NSW schools

At my high school, De Vialar College, we used to have the highest number of religion classes in the state of WA — five periods of religion a week PLUS one period of religious singing. A total of six. We also had the highest proportion of nun teachers to students in the State — only a couple of the teachers weren’t nuns. They were the very dedicated Sisters of St Joseph of the Apparition who’d insisted on so many religion classes that all other lessons and phys ed were trimmed to squeeze them in. They’d worked hard to get approval from the Ed Dept to get permission for so many religion classes (I’d heard the boast a couple of times that they’d told the Ed Dept they’d rather close the school if they couldn’t teach that much religion), and it was used as a major selling point. We had non-Catholics attending too. Only 200 in the whole school. Classes had to finish at 3.15pm daily, as the nuns all ran off to watch The Young and the Restless in the attached convent. We’d hear the theme music wafting out as we’d leave and giggle about it.

The religious ed was mostly great — we sat around debating moral questions and could say whatever we wanted. Eg. “Is it bad to want to be popular?” Answer: it was if it meant you abandoned your morals! That question used to come up all the time. And lots about peer group pressure and how we mustn’t cave in. There was stuff on bullying. About the poor. About Catholic persecution during WWII. Missionary work. We were taught about other religions too. We used to have masses and sing in the choir. We had Marriage Encounter couples tell us the ups and downs of being together til death do us part. We learnt about people in other countries. It was all over too quickly. It was a fun time. I remember we all had to write an essay in class about “What God means to me”, then we discussed the answers. And the nuns didn’t just teach the values; if they saw anyone being excluded or bullied, there’d be prompt action. Every 40-minute study period began and ended with a prayer and we stopped work to say the Angelus every midday. We didn’t learn heaps of Catholic dogma or discuss the Vatican’s latest encyclicals. There wasn’t as much anti-church material around then. The anti-church stuff then was contraception, living together, divorce, free love, drugs, having kids out of wedlock.  I didn’t remember much sex abuse stuff being widely aired then. The priests I knew, from three parishes, were never charged with that. Most priests aren’t abusers.

They were like ethics classes. So I think these ethics class ideas are brilliant. Funded by P&Cs. They’ve presented their idea to the NSW State Government — to two previous education ministers and now the current one, Verity Firth. The idea keeps getting knocked back cause of the power of the Catholic Church and other churches — again, despite their 8 per cent church attendance, they have power cause of the public services they provide: schools, hospitals. They’re entitled to discriminate on the basis of sex and sexual orientation when employing teachers and nurses. Their staff aren’t allowed to parade in Mardi Gras or be openly “out”.

The churches also currently claim that they’re the only ones providing any moral fabric and instruction — only because they’re actively stopping ethics classes from being held. They insist that if students don’t attend religious instruction they must do nothing! So the churches keep taking kudos for any type of morality, as though society will fall apart without them and their discriminating guilt-pushing ideas. (The sort of ideas that lead to gay people being bashed and murdered in parks.)

I appreciate the ethics/religious instruction I got at school and I think everyone should be able to get that. Now, it’s only people who are trying to pass the Australian citizenship test that get any teaching on Australian values.

The theme music from The Young and the Restless, 1973.

Paul McGeough on Afghanistan

Watched Dateline and read McG’s articles in SMH on Sat and today.

I find it so incredible how the Afghans enjoy playing us for fools, trying to con us out of foreign aid money but then dealing with the Taliban too.

Do Afghans ever see these types of reports or read about them?

Do they realise how they appear?

Do they have laptops and wireless internet access?

Can they translate the material?

They all look so young and insouciant and insolent, toying with the US officers.

Meanwhile, we’re paying for a $US100 million highway “being built by the international security forces”.

One of the US officers joined the army to “destroy the enemy” so he seems frustrated by having to pussyfoot around being diplomatic.