By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
FaRmLaNd on 08 September 2010
Edit Thread
Kasz216 said:
FaRmLaNd said:
Kasz216 said:

You know... there are many many other ways related to peoples rights too that hurts Australia and makes it rightwing vs the US.

For example, the level at which they STILL screw over their indegious peoples.  (Native American's are pretty screwed up form past treatments, but violations against them are far lower and not instutitionalized like Austarlia.)

It's so bad to the point of where they've been called out by the UN human rights council.


I'd certainly agree that our treatment of the indigenous peoples is poor.

It cuts both ways though, as we've had plenty of pm's that are athiests and agnostics and in general religion is far less of an issue here for example.

The proposed internet filter however wont pass the upper house as the greens and the liberals are both against it. So its hard to say that civil liberties are curbed by something thats proposed and not actually law and certainly wont become law.

except, your civil liberties are already fairly crubed. 

As for "religion" being an issue.  I don't think I follow.  There are a lot of atheists and agnostic politcians in Austrlia because there are a lot of Atheist and Agnostic people IN australia.  It's like 15%-20%... and that's just self declared.

Nor is there specific government run religious discrimination.  Honsetly there are few places in the world religion is more free then in the US. 

Ironically your entire form of government seems VERY conservative.  The individual states in australia have WAY more power then individual US states.

Decentralization is a conservative tenant.

The Australian constitution also prohibits the federal government from doing the same "Section 116 of the Constitution of Australia prohibits the Commonwealth of Australia (i.e., the federal parliament) from making laws for establishing any religion, imposing any religious observance, or prohibiting the free exercise of any religion. Section 116 also provides that no religious test shall be required as a qualification for any office or public trust under the Commonwealth" from wiki.

Of course the states are an issue, but they've been loosing power continually for a significant amount of time. Plus the NSW government (the state I live in) is passing same sex adoption laws (which have already passed the lower house) so the states aren't neccesarily slowing down such progress.

Interesting, the figures on the percentage of atheists in the US do seem to be smaller then I remember. My mistake.

But I do agree that the states here cause significant problems. Its the main reason we still don't have an r18 games ratings. Because one Attorneys-General keeps on blocking it. Which is pissing off a lot of people as I'm sure you're aware of. It just seems to be one of these generational issues, just like same sex marriage and adoption is. The results show that the majority of the people support these initiatives (and the younger you are, the less people are against such issues on average), its just some old fools and I suppose the fear of the small but nevertheless influencial "Somebody think of the children" brigade. Thats holding up such progress.