* VILIFICATION APPEAL PUTS ISLAM UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

* ALARM AT SOARING CANNABIS USE IN REMOTE AREAS

* TONY ABBOTT CLAIMS MEDIA’S DOUBLE STANDARD ON CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS

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VILIFICATION APPEAL PUTS ISLAM UNDER THE SPOTLIGHT

It is impossible to vilify Islam without also vilifying Muslims, because the two are indistinguishable, the Victorian Court of Appeal has been told. “If one vilifies Islam, one is by necessary consequence vilifying people who hold that religious belief,” Brind Woinarski, QC, told the court. Mr Woinarski was appearing for the Islamic Council of Victoria in the appeal by Christian group Catch the Fire Ministries and pastors Danny Nalliah and Daniel Scot against a finding under Victoria’s religious hatred law that they vilified Muslims in 2002. Cameron Macaulay, for the pastors, argued that the act explicitly confined the prohibition to vilifying persons, not the religion. By implication, it recognised one could hate the idea without hating the person. Justice Geoffrey Nettle asked Mr Woinarski: “There must be intellectually a distinction between the ideas and those who hold them?” “We don’t agree with that,” Mr Woinarski said. Justice Nettle: “Are you saying it’s impossible to incite hatred against a religion without also inciting hatred against people who adhere to that religion?” Mr Woinarski: “Yes.” Mr Macaulay said orders by Judge Michael Higgins against the pastors to take out a newspaper advertisement apologising and not to repeat certain teachings were too wide, and beyond his powers under the act. He said “They are restrained by law from suggesting or implying a number of things about what in their view the Koran teaches: that it preaches violence and killing, that women are of little value, that the God of Islam, Allah, is not merciful, that there is a practice of ‘silent jihad’ for spreading Islam, or that the Koran says Allah will remit the sins of martyrs. Mr Macaulay said the act burdened free speech, contravened international treaties Australia had signed and breached the Australian constitution. Justice Geoffrey Nettle said: “Surely you can’t justify restraining them from saying something that said by anyone else would be legal? In the case of the newsletter, for example, Pastor Nalliah says many churches have closed down. What’s wrong with saying that?” Ms Mortimer for the Islamic Council replied: “The tribunal has found there is something wrong with saying it. Truth is not a defence, it’s irrelevant to contravention of the act.” Justice David Ashley said a judge could not restrain conduct that was lawful. Justice Ashley said so many of the statements were entirely innocuous and asked how the pastors could legitimately be restrained from making them. Justice Geoffrey Nettle questioned whether too much was expected of Pastor Scot. Justice Nettle said that if only some comments from the seminar were banned, “a layman whose first language is not English (Pastor Scot, from Pakistan) is supposed to go through 140 pages of judgement and discern from that things he may not say on pain of contempt”. Cameron Macaulay, barrister for the pastors, claimed that Judge Higgins made errors of law and that his orders were too wide, and questioned the constitutional validity of the act. Victorian Government Solicitor-General Pamela Tate made a presentation on the constitutional question, claiming that the Act was valid and that the implied right to freedom of political communication in the federal constitution (as established by High Court decisions) did not apply in this instance since the matters did not qualify as ‘political. Some question followed by the justices as to the nature of political discussion and the development of policy and public debate being part of ‘political speech’. The appeal to the Court of Appeal can only be made on errors in law, not on errors of fact. This means that sections of Judge Higgins’ ruling which are believed to be inaccurate cannot be redressed or appealed. Justices Nettle, Ashley and Marcia Neave reserved their decision. It is not known when their decision will be handed down.

Source: Compiled by the APN from various media reports

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ALARM AT SOARING CANNABIS USE IN REMOTE AREAS

Cannabis use has risen sharply in remote indigenous communities, and children as young as 10 are smoking the drug. A survey of police has also found that amphetamines are available and commonly used in most of the communities. “Cannabis is now flowing into remote areas at an alarming rate, a trade fuelled by high demand and extreme profits but increasingly facilitated by profiteers from outside the community rather than resident user-dealers,” says a report by the National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund. “This new wave of cannabis use is in addition to – not instead of – alcohol and other substances,” the report says. Most of the 792 police who were surveyed in the Northern Territory, Queensland, South Australia and Western Australia said that cannabis was “very commonly used” or “commonly used” in communities. Many of the police who were asked also said use of the drug had “increased” or “greatly increased” in the past three years. “Some of the poorest and youngest users spend a third to two-thirds of their weekly incomes on cannabis,” the report says. “Bucket bongs are widely used to binge on cannabis, and the age of first-time use is falling, with children as young as 10 or 11 years old smoking the drug.” The National Drug Law Enforcement Research Fund, funded by the Federal Government, presented the report at an Australian Institute of Criminology conference in Darwin. The paper says poverty and isolation are not impeding the drug trade. “Drug networks are being founded on what one study calls the ‘extreme profits’ to be made in remote areas, where a $4000 purchase of cannabis can be expected to return $16,000 to $21,000 in profits – often within a couple of hours of arriving in the community,” the report says. Police said heavy cannabis use exacerbated many existing problems among indigenous people, especially violence and mental health problems. “There is strong anecdotal evidence. that local and non-local Aboriginal people are heavily implicated in the cannabis trade in regional and remote Australia,” the report says. It says “conventional drug policing strategies are rarely suited to rural and remote areas” where police are highly visible, as police tactics, such as surveillance, can be easy to identify. The report describes a “drug house” in an outback town where a non-Aboriginal barman at a hotel invites Aboriginal girls as young as 12 for free drinks and drugs. The report says the underlying dysfunction affecting many disadvantaged communities are “clearly factors that predispose residents of those communities to higher rates of alcohol and other drug use”.

Source: Compiled by the APN from various media reports.

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TONY ABBOTT CLAIMS MEDIA’S DOUBLE STANDARD ON CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICS

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott has taken the media to task for consistently denigrating politicians whose position on moral issues are based on Christian values. Mr Abbott has recently taken heavy criticism from the media for his stand on issues such as the abortion pill debate and stem cell research because of taking a traditional Catholic moral position towards each issue. He sited as a classic example of the media’s seeming preoccupation with denigrating those with traditional moral values, the issue raised during the last election campaign when the mere fact of a meeting with the Catholic Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, was taken to be evidence of a conspiracy. He took umbrage also at the media’s reporting of the rise of the so-called religious Right which has been painted by some commentators as almost a reactionary movement of religious bigots, when the views expressed by such people were the prevailing view of a majority of Australians even just one generation ago. He went on to say that is was now rare for stories about particular politicians on particular topics not to be embellished with gratuitous adjectives such as “devout Catholic”. He said “A senior journalist from a leading paper today called my office wanting to know whether I had discussed stem cells recently with Cardinal Pell. As if it were anyone’s business; as if such a discussion would somehow discredit any position I might hold. The journalist was told that from time to time I did indeed have discussions with the Cardinal; they were always instructive and I wished they were more frequent. Two generations after it was thought sectarianism had finally vanished from public life, this is doubtless evidence that I am the Vatican mole in the Howard Government.” Mr Abbott pointed out that he considered the media had a chronic politically correct double standard in the different coverage it gave to moral issues as against social justice issues. He noted that the media was much more sympathetic to the position taken by some Christian politicians on social justice issues than they were on those who took a Christian position on moral issues. He said “It’s worth noting that when Bruce Baird, Steven Fielding and Barnaby Joyce invoked their Christian consciences to oppose the Government’s immigration bill, there were no calls to keep religion out of politics. Mr Abbott said “I just take the church and its teaching seriously in a way that was almost universal scarcely a generation back. What’s at work here is not just journalists’ lack of understanding of the Christian culture that underpins our society, but their reluctance to extend a fair go to what’s unfashionable. Australian journalism needs to be more intellectually curious and less implicitly judgmental” he said.

Source: Compiled by APN from various media reports

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