Leslie Cannold has had enough of being even-handed and presenting Both Sides Now. She wants to cut to the chase: what’s the right way to go? In her new column, Dr Cannold brings her ethical training to everyday dilemmas. Send your questions to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line. She might even reply…
Dear Leslie,
I am appalled at those who attended that engagement party in Melbourne, violating every lockdown rule and laughing about it. But because I’m also Jewish, I feel a bit embarrassed. And responsible. Am I?
Shamefaced in Balaclava
Dear Shamefaced,
OMG, don’t get me going about that engagement party. I’ve been fuming about it all week! The blatant disregard of rules designed to keep others safe and that everyone else is complying with despite the hardship. The high levels of amusement about that fact evinced by most of the 69 attendees, among them not just the groom-to-be who is an aspiring lawyer, but two medical doctors.
Then, and this really gets my goat, the decision of attendees of this illicit and now confirmed super-spreader event to trip merrily through the shops in the area — including the Coles — confining hundreds to the hardship and misery of 14 days of isolation. Grrrrrrr. It’s totally, absolutely outrageous.
But here’s the thing. Unless you were there or knew about it beforehand but did nothing to stop it, morally speaking you are in the clear.
I’m not dismissing your sense of embarrassment and guilt. I’m Jewish and have been fighting off both feelings all week, as have some of my Jewish friends. But while this episode has and will almost certainly continue to cause anti-Semites to crawl out from under their rocks and spew their abominable lies and hate, the truth is that the most morally egregious aspects of this gathering have nothing to do with the Jewishness of the attendees.
It has to do with their character — and, sadly, self-serving and arrogance comes in all shapes, faiths and colours.
Having said that, I don’t think there is any harm for individuals or groups representing minority communities to distance themselves from the heinous behaviour of their members. Such personal distancing is not an obligation, of course, but at a time when our interdependence and sense of collective obligation is heightened, it can’t hurt.
I know I felt better when former Labor MP Philip Dalidakis said on Facebook that while the event was “not representative of the overwhelming Jewish community” those who took part “should be ashamed” and be “dealt with in the strongest possible terms”.
Dalidakis said something else important, too: “The level of indifference to the health impacts of our wider community is appalling. The insular behaviour of those involved who have hidden behind religious observance or used other loopholes (incl health support exemptions) to continue to meet is outrageous.”
If Dalidakis is right that one Melbourne religious community is taking advantage of the special privileges it’s been granted to avoid the worst of lockdown, I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts other religious groups are too. And if that’s the case, as Melbourne stands on a knife-edge regarding the current outbreak of COVID-19, perhaps it’s high time for the religious exemption to go.
Indeed, given the secular nature of a state like Victoria, it’s hard to understand why it was granted in the first place.
Dear Leslie,
I understand the concept of one-vote-one-value in a democracy, but that’s not exactly how it works in my marginal electorate. That’s because most of the small proportion of voters who decide the outcome have absolutely no interest in politics or the issues — so surely the value of their uninterest and apathy isn’t equivalent to my passionate interest and political engagement and therefore they shouldn’t get a full vote?
Marginal Voter
Hi, Marginal,
Your letter reminds me of Churchill’s famous observation that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.
But while the witticism makes me smile, it raises the same question as your letter. Is it the theory of democracy that’s the problem, or the practice, particularly as that practice plays out in your corner?
If the very idea of one-person-one-vote irks you, that makes you an epistocrat — someone who supports epistocracy thinks, like you do, that those who know nothing, or less than nothing, about the workings of the world should have less influence on how it runs than those who know a lot.
But while this sounds sensible, the devil is in the implementation. What does the informed voter need to know about, and how informed do they need to be to retain an equal vote? What if I have PhD-level knowledge about a South American snail but can talk sensibly about little else? What if I’m a repository of ancient Aboriginal language and traditions but didn’t finish high school? Who decides and how? Through the presentation of a college degree? A score on a test?
I’m actually a fan of Australia’s compulsory voting system precisely because it engages those you call apathetic. Universal voting moderates the hyper-partisanship tearing strips off democracy in places like the United States, where only highly engaged voters like yourself participate, and by so doing drag the extremes further left and right.
If it’s the practice of democracy in your corner of the world that’s bothering you, the way I see it is, you’re lucky.
Those in marginal seats have waaaaaay more chance of influencing policies in your electorate and the composition of the next government than someone in a safe seat. Not through being granted an extra-weighty vote for being so smart, but by having access to the handful of voters who — if you can influence them — can turn the vote your way.
So why not get organised and find out more about these folks who you live among and are your neighbours? Everyone has things they care about, things that offend and disgust them, and things that they want.
With less than a year until the federal election, the time to engage, activate and persuade them to your point of view is now.
Send your dilemmas to letters@crikey.com.au with “Dear Leslie” in the subject line and you could get a reply from Dr Cannold in her new column. We reserve the right to edit letters for length and clarity.
Remember this is an Orthodox religious attended event. And like all fundamentalist religions it has no time for science or women.
Yeah, but it’s not one of those “made up religions”, is it?
What do you mean? ALL religions are made up! Fantasy stories!
…whoooosh…!
Indeed, and the madrassas/schools of indoctrination are raking in taxpayers dollars in the billions more than ever before. And then there’s the chaplaincy in public schools courtesy of the Coalition and their rabid religious voters. And it was Whitlam that kicked off religious school funding in a big way, just as it was Hawke that allowed the Catholic Shoppies union the SDA, to come back into the union fold for financial reasons.
” Here is a radical view: governments should not fund private schools. They should not fund their orchestra pits or swimming pools or rowing sheds.
If parents want to develop or maintain an elite system outside of public education they are perfectly entitled to do so, but that system should not be subsidised.
The fact is this: on the government’s own data, 150 private schools receive more funding than they are entitled to under the School Resourcing Standard, some at almost three times the correct level. By comparison, there is not a single public school in New South Wales funded at its recommended level.
That is a chilling reality. Not a single public school in NSW is funded at the level the government’s own standard says is appropriate.
But Loreto Kirribilli takes more than 2.8 times its funding entitlement. Monte Sant’ Angelo Mercy College takes 2.7 times its correct allotment. Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview takes more than 2.6 times its assessed level.
Once again, the telltale number: not a single public school in NSW is funded at the government’s own standard.
The argument that says the parents of private school students pay tax and so should see that money invested into the private system is a bogus one. There is nothing to stop that parent sending their child to a public school where that tax is being spent. What that person is asking for is a subsidy for elitism.
The end to government funding of private education would have to be managed gradually. It would lead to an increase in private fees and see more students enter the public system. Some schools might fail. Others might reduce their infrastructure.
In the long term, it could likely cost the government more as the state system expanded to educate greater numbers of students. But this is in defence of a more worthwhile principle, a principle that says the bedrock of a person’s development, their education, should be equal. There should not be two Australias, propped up by government spending. Public money should not be used to make one group of people more elite than another. And it should not be dangerous to say so.” TDP 01/10/2016
What that person is asking for is a subsidy for elitism.
A subsidy to indoctrinate their children in fact, both class, culture and religious wise.
Obviously you do not know that the Catholic education system existed prior to the state one?
Or that when the Catholic system was receiving the majority of the students with no help from the federal government they went “on strike” and sent all their pupils down to the state system and Hawke coughed up.
The massive over funding from the federal government came when Howard sought to bring in the Hill’s shire or Hillsong and the rest is history.
Obviously you have assumed incorrectly
If only they remained a fantasy instead of turning into a gruesome reality and worming their way into power and inflicting their brand of fantasy upon others, the laws of the land and society. It’s been a long slog to get out from under the heel of religions and become a so called secular governed nation.
But that slog has ended and despite the success of the hard won and fought SSM legislation, despite the Coalition’s refusal to appoint a Minister for Science (first time since the 1930’s that no Science Minister was to be found in parliament) the Coalition’s fear of incurring the wrath of their fossil fuel mates and the fundamentalist/orthodox denominations who subscribe to whatever brand of hokey pokey voodoo that lights up their meagre grey matter, we as a nation have descended closer to hell thanks to John Howard and the votes for sale lot who followed him.
Nah, this is the one true religion/cult/belief, don’t you know, and that one over there….it’s the one true religion too, in fact let’s kill each other to see whose religion/cult is the winner while we mouth about the sanctity of human life and the right to believe what you want while killing, imprisoning, murdering gays, hacking off arms legs and stoning someone tried in a religious kangaroo court, etc etc, and our species has stopped evolving to intelligence and science over the last decade or so and towards ever more rights to inflict suffering on others in our own dog’s name, to having power at the very top of the parliamentary/juntas/autocratic tree where those like John Howard and his kind, and Labor also, bow down to the ever more powerful tax exempt businesses known as religions.
Do you mean the prosperity cult so worshiped by the SlowMo.
“Dear Leslie, I am non-religious and appalled at the Christ Embassy super-spreader.” Are Apostolic Glad and Pentecostal Scott going to say anything about it?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/aug/23/extraordinary-police-fine-dozens-of-churchgoers-after-service-in-western-sydney-covid-hotspot
Morrison delayed so the conference could be held last year for his brand of cultism
I basically agree on both points, but:
The god of mammon
There was never a god of mammon – he was “…the least erected Spirit that fell/From heav’n, for ev’n in heav’n his looks & thoughts/Were always downward bent, admiring more/ The riches of Heav’ns pavement, trod’n Gold,/Then aught divine or holy else enjoy’d/In vision beatific” – Paradise Lost Bk1:679-684
That sounds like Scummo and his prosperity Hillsinger scam.
Scum’s god is mammon, that’s what I mean
I also think we should note that criticism of Jewish folk is not, in and of itself antisemitic. Criticism for being selfish and uncaring is not about Judaism and neither should it be. It is about personal choice and behaviour and people should be held to account regardless of, not because of, any religiosity, race, gender etc,.
Dear Leslie,
More of this please! Loved your new style column.
On compulsory voting, imagine if it applied in the US, along with preferential voting!
Also England and, going to the polls next month, Canada.
Odd that the three are olde skool Anglophone.
Australia more or less invented STV but fell over on the PR except in the Senate, kinda-sorta as did NZ before it shifted to MME.
Thanks Betty!
The Democrats would always win. The Republican Party relies upon “Voter suppression” to be able to win.
America has a “left”?
Not in reality!
Imagine a seesaw. Imagine the GOP sitting in the seat on the right hand side, holding onto the handlebars. Now imagine the Democratic Party sitting on the other side of the handlebars, holding onto them. There is the left.
Here we have one of the Abrahamic faiths involved in a look at me moment. Again. To everyone else, lobby your local MP to have religions organisations pay tax. That will be the first step in disempowering these archaic institutions involved in the intellectual and moral fraud called abrahamic religion. Please Abrahamics, go to your respective enclaves and stay there. Even though I am a live and let live liberal, the time has come for even me to say I want freedom from religion. Secular human society doesn’t need your nonsense. Remember these are religions, not ethnicities, like they claim. More fraud.
Agree