Rules Are One for All and All for One
By Peter Fitzsimons
Amid all Cardinal George Pell's bluster about the forthcoming royal commission, it is clear he does not have the first clue as to what is happening here. Allow me, Cardinal, to spell it out. While you are free to worship whatever god you choose, it is now clear that generations of Australian children have been interfered with by your sex-maddened priests and, just as is happening all over the world, your church is now going to be called to account for both these actions and its appalling cover-ups. As to those who, outrageously, support Cardinal Pell in his statement that ''the seal of the Confessional is inviolable'' - as in all Australians should obey the laws requiring the reporting of sexual abuse, except the very group identified as being most responsible for that abuse - give yourselves an uppercut. To be intellectually consistent on this, you would have to also support the imposition of the even more appalling sharia for those who worship Allah. From the moment you make exceptions for religions because of the dictates of imaginary friends, you attack the very essence of one law for all Australians and it is unsustainable. This royal commission must drag all religious institutions, kicking and screaming if necessary, into the 21st century. Don't bother … Love this proclamation, which has been circulating on the net: ''To the Republicans who said they will move to Australia if Obama won: Australia has universal healthcare, compulsory voting, no guns, no death penalty, pro-choice when it comes to contraception, openly gay politicians and judges, evolution is taught in all schools and our female PM is an unmarried atheist. Be sure to declare your pitchforks at Tullamarine.'' Makes you proud to be an Australian, doesn't it? Privy to logic? TFF's brief republican rant last week occasioned a great deal of correspondence from readers, the most astute of which noted that while ''you can't be head of state in the US unless you were born there, you can't be head of state in Australia unless you were born somewhere else''. Exactly! As to what specific method I propose for Australia to become a republic - I thought you'd never ask - I call it the ''Privy Council minimalist model''. As you will recall, until the mid-1970s a decision of the High Court of Australia could be appealed to Britain's Privy Council. Then - as the conservatives screamed - Gough Whitlam's government passed legislation to end that right of appeal, on the reckoning that Australia's own judges were capable of deciding on Australian issues. Pigs did not fly and the sky did not fall. Which brings me to how we can most easily become a republic. At the moment, to choose our titular head, the system is that the Prime Minister picks a Governor-General and the Queen gives her assent. I propose the smallest possible change: The Prime Minister picks a Governor-General and then the Parliament gives its assent. Nothing else need change! We don't even change the title of ''Governor-General'', avoiding all the baggage that goes with the word ''President''. Then we all get on with our lives, freed from the international embarrassment of still being linked with the English monarchy, more than 100 years after Federation. Little foresight Following an idea that came out of the 20/20 Summit of 2008, Kevin Rudd committed $50 million to the development of a bionic eye, essentially the visual equivalent of the cochlear implant. And it is going well! For the past couple of weeks TFF has been filming a story for Channel Seven's Sunday Night program on a woman, blind for 24 years, who has had the first of four implants in her retina and is hopefully going to be able to see the adult faces of her two sons for the first time. The problem is, the money is running out, and the federal government is yet to commit to expanding the funding. (Talk about limited vision.) Last week I interviewed Rudd - who is fiercely proud of the progress - and fully agree with his assessment: ''I believe if we look back in 10 or 20 years' time we would absolutely kill ourselves if we allow this to drop mid-field.'' Hey, Nene It is odd when the promotion of one book brings you face-to-face with a long- disappeared subject of another book, but so it was on Thursday night when I turned up at Ballarat's Sovereign Hill to speak at a dinner on my book Eureka: The Unfinished Revolution, only to find my erstwhile biographical subject Nene King waiting for me. The focus of a forthcoming ABC teledrama, Magazine Wars (the follow-up to Paper Giants), the one-time magazine queen is rising 70, recovering from a hip operation, and has recently known hard emotional and financial times, but she is still Nene, still filled with wonderful stories and still has that vibrancy that put her at the top of her game for more than two decades. Joke of the week Fred is back in the doctor's surgery, accompanied, as always, by his long-suffering wife of 60 years, Mavis. The doctor looks concerned following the examination. ''Fred,'' the medico says. ''These results are quite worrying. I am going to have to follow up and take blood, urine and faeces samples.'' Fred, whose hearing is not so good, turns to his wife and says: ''Mavis, what did the doctor say?'' ''He says he wants your pyjamas, Fred.''
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