Blaming Abbott for Jones

Cartoon: By Pickering  

Many of the news commentary people on TV and radio have little to recommend them, like Labor shill Kerry O’Brien, Media Watch’s supercilious, sanctimonious snark, Jonathon Holmes, and the foul mouthed and intemperate Kyle Sandilands.  The skin crawlingly odious Allan Jones though, takes the cake with his comment that the recently deceased father of Julia Gillard died of shame, to think he had a daughter who told lies.

Few would disagree that Gillard lies as natural as a cowhide rug on sedatives, especially since her ‘no carbon tax’ statement but her parents always indicated that they were proud of her.  To use his death as a pretext for an attack is wrong, insensitive, and disgraceful, especially given that the man has only been buried a couple of days ago.

What is also disgraceful is the way Foreign Minister Bob Carr has attempted to blame Opposition leader Tony Abbott for it: 

… "I've heard some indecent things in politics but never something as thoroughly indecent as this," Senator Carr told Network Ten's Meet The Press program. 

"Tony Abbott ought to do the decent thing and say today loud and clear that he apologises to Julia Gillard for unacceptable remarks, made at a Liberal party gathering attended by frontbench liberals. 

"Tony Abbott ought to send a message that the extremists at that gathering who cheered and applauded and laughed at that appalling utterance, Tony Abbott ought to make it clear that those people are denounced by him as well." …

Carr is drawing rather a long bow in referring to the Young Liberals as a Liberal Party organisation; it is more of an affiliated youth group, mainly joined for the better class of parties, pissups, and hot chicks there.  They are represented within the party but mainly as a nursery. 

In any case, Abbott had nothing to do with it and Carr’s insinuation smacks of desperation to lay the blame somewhere that suits him better.  Abbott has condemned the comment but has no need or reason to appologise.

The greatest irony to this story is that Mark Latham regards the Jones comment as coming from a ‘culture of hate.’  Is Mark accusing someone else of being intemperate?

Update: (H/t Andrew Bolt) Carr has just found out why the expression, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones,” exists.  His longstanding speechwriter and courtier of controversy, Bob Ellis wrote a scathing post on Gillard leaving the APEC conference owing the death of her father.  If Abbott should apologise over Jones’s remark, perhaps Carr should do the same over Ellis’s. 

In reality; neither owes anyone an apology. 

Conroy’s fetish for power and red underpants

The Australian Communication Minister, Stephen Conroy likes his power unfettered, and his businessmen with red underpants on their heads.  No, seriously this is fair dincum.  Steve is the guy who wants to legislate to license reporters, have a ‘fit and proper person’ test for media owners, and install a super regulator to control all media down as far as blogs which get more than forty three hits per day.  Well actually the whole government wants this, but it is Steve’s bailiwick.

On the infrastructure front, just as everyone is moving rapidly towards mobile devices, Steve is spending (depending on whose estimates are being used) around 43 billion on a super dooper broadband network. 

This might explain the figure of 43 hits on every blog mentioned above; one hit per day per billion dollars.  If this is the case, a lot of bloggers will be relieved.  With the usual cost blowouts from this government they will probably be able to get around 120 per day before the department sends them a CD of “I’ll be watching you.”

But, getting back to the power thing, he has felt it satisfying to let the Yanks know in no uncertain terms, just how important he believes himself to be: 

“The regulation of telecommunications powers in Australia is exclusively federal," Mr Conroy said during a speech to the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information conference in New York last week.  “I have unfettered legal power. 

"If I say to everyone in this room ‘if you want to bid in our spectrum auction you’d better wear red underpants on your head’, I’ve got some news for you. You’ll be wearing them on your head.” 

A video of his speech has been made available online.  Conroy was arguing against a proposal by the International Telecommunications Union to introduce a new sender party pays regime for international internet settlements - a move that could push up the price of broadband in Australia. 

The senator claimed the proposal could see telcos charged more for cable access, the costs of which could ultimately be passed onto consumers and said the government would consider creating its own subsea cable. 

His comments were derided by Opposition spokesperson for Communication, Malcolm Turnbull, who said his speech showed he was a "control freak". 

“As Mark Twain said confessions are good for the soul but bad for the reputation but never more so than when a cabinet minister confesses to rampant megalomania.” ...

He has also come up with the idea of building a new undersea cable to the US if prices don’t fall.  Taxpayers who are nostalgic for the good old days before satellites wont mind putting up the money, after all, Conroy has unfettered power.

The item doesn't mention whether the American businessmen were impressed or not, but the statement will certainly be taken into account if or when they consider risking their capital here.  This power mad idiot represents unacceptable sovereign risk in his own right.

Katter’s Party puts the hard word on Barnaby

Image: Katter posing, this time for a photo. Source; Courier Mail

Bob Katter, or at least his party has offered National Party Senate leader Barnaby Joyce an invitation to join them.  In an effort to lure him, they have made the offer of finding him a lower house seat, which is interesting, as the only one they have is the one occupied by Katter himself.  Barnaby has tried to move to the House of Representatives, which might give him a shot at deputy PM. 

The pretext they give though is Joyce’s opposition to the sale of Cubby Station to Chinese interests, one of the few areas where he has been dead wrong.  Cubbie has been in receivership since 2009 with debts of over $300 million.  Joyce wanted the government to ‘acquire’ it and break it up into smaller lots and sell it.

Should the breakup of the station be the best solution to the problem, there is no reason for government to be involved as private enterprise has all the expertise and capital required for such an action.  While many Australians are concerned at the degree of foreign ownership here, the idea of federal takeovers should send a shiver down the spines of most primary producers.

It looks like Barnaby is staying put:

 Katter's Australia Party is trying to get the Nationals Senator to join the fledgling party, saying it is the only way Senator Joyce can protect the interests of Australia's farms and agricultural industry. 

Party president, Max Menzel was full of praise for Senator Joyce's recent outspokenness over Coalition support of the sale of Cubbie station."Barnaby made a courageous public stand within the LNP against the sale of Cubbie Station but it will be to no avail if he remains a member of a party that supports this foreign takeover," Mr Menzel said recently. … 

… Senator Joyce's reaction to the party membership invitation was in typical Barnaby style. 

"They want me to grab a big hat, so I've gone down to my local country clobber store and told them I want to look more substantial than Bob Katter and they've set me up with a sombrero and two bandanas and two Colt .45s and my horse is called Chocolate Thunder, and here I come.”

 Katter may need to invite Barnaby out to a few candle lit dinners, walk him about under the full moon, hold his hand, and whisker sweet nothings in his ear for a while.

What will today's "Green Generation" be remembered for?

By Viv Forbes


"Carbon Sense"

Already they have re-discovered wind power, wood energy and electric cars that were tried and largely rejected a century ago; they now encourage the production of once-banned ethanol corn whiskey, but waste it on cars; they spurn the energy potential of nuclear, coal, oil and gas; and they would close our airports and lock up our resources whilst developing computerised spy-ware to record, regulate, ration and tax our usage of everything.

And one branch of NASA, the once-great risk-taking scientific and engineering body that put Neil Armstrong on the moon, is now supporting an anti-carbon anti-industry cult that advocates the closure of the whole coal industry from mine to power station.

The legacy of today's doom-mongers will be measured by the number of dams not built, the number of mines, factories, farms, forests and fishing grounds closed and the number of humans starving or living in poverty.

Like the emperors of the Nero era in ancient Rome, they celebrate their destructive achievements by staging expensive Climate Circuses, while behind closed doors they plot to destroy the last vestiges of the freedom and property rights that allowed past generations to "Reach for the Stars".

The slogan of the coming era should be "Retreat to the Past".

So vale Neil Armstrong and Steve Jobs - we are losing far more than most people realise.

(For a look at the achievements of the Green Generation, have a look here at how their $250 billion investment in “Renewable” energy is panning out:

Those funds they have spent are not renewable. They were wasted on unproductive junk.

UKIP’s Nigel Farage fined

 It has to be said, a name like Herman van Rompuy has a certain ring to it.  It conjures up an image of gravitas, bearing, panache, a degree of jovial good humor, and has a bit of class about it.  The reality though is the guy in the image on the left, who looks like a disheveled homeless person who has been picked up, dropped into a good suit, and plonked down in the halls of power with a bad case of dyspepsia.  It’s a bit like calling a sparrow Hercules Swartznegger.

A frantic sex scandal couldn’t make this guy interesting, not that he is ever likely to have one.  If he wanted to, it is unlikely that he would be able to find someone willing to share the experience.  If he managed to, Fleet St which can, on a slow news day usually get a raunchy and sensational headline out of rabbits getting it off, would probably decide that he is just too dull for readers to be bothered with.

What we can be grateful to him for though, is that he has given us an excuse to repost the second best video from the European parliament, Nigel Farage’s ‘Who are you’ speech.  The best is of course Daniel Hannan’s  ‘Devalued prime minister’ speech, but I digress.  Farage has been fined £2,400 (AUD 3,750) for pointing out Herman’s shortcomings:

The Daily Mail has the story:

The European Parliament has upheld a £2,400 fine against UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. The MEP was docked the money in 2010 for tearing into Herman Van Rompuy, who had just been appointed EU president.  

Addressing the former Belgian premier in parliament, Mr Farage said he had ‘the charisma of a damp rag’ and the ‘appearance of a low-grade bank clerk’ As Mr Van Rompuy listened, Mr Farage added that the Belgian came from 'pretty much a non-country.'**  

Jerzy Buzek, the then parliamentary chief, ordered Mr Farage to apologise. He refused and the authorities cut €3,000 from his pay. He appealed to the European Court of Justice but it ruled that he filed his appeal too late and would also have to pay parliament's legal expenses. 

Mr Farage was unrepentant last night, saying: ‘They have made themselves a laughing stock over this. It is a simple question of free speech.’ 

Given the insults thrown at UKIP by members of the European parliament, it hardly seems unreasonable for Farage to hand out a tongue-lashing. Taking this action against him is totally unjustified, and an exercise in the unjustified use of power for power’s sake.

H/t IPA

** This statement was made during a prolonged period of political instability in Belgium, including an eighteen month period during which no government was formed.

West Australian council bans church feeding poor

Churches can tend towards activities that they have no business being in, such as lobbying governments to inflict religion based taboos on the rest of us who are not worried about the afterlife.  On the other hand there are areas where the state has no business being, such as inflicting religion based taboos on of us, mandating actions, prohibiting peaceful interactions in certain areas, and so on.

Menzies House has highlighted a case where a council is banning a church from carrying out one of the most basic and fundamentally Christian actions as we understand them to be; feeding the poor:

… “A Scarborough church risked a $1 million fine last night by serving its weekly free Sunday meal, after the City of Stirling deemed many of the church’s activities were in breach of local planning regulations. 

“Under the planning scheme, Scarborough Baptist Church is allowed to use its land on the corner of Westview Street and Brighton Road as a place of worship and child daycare centre. In a letter sent on September 18, the council identified activities such as serving dinner at weekly Sunday evening services, craft classes, band practice and preschool dance classes as unapproved use of the land. 

“These activities mean the 65-year-old church risks a $1 million fine and a further $125,000 fine for each day it is found to be in breach of council regulations. …

If banning acts of charity by a church, or the thought of bureaucrats mandating what is or isn’t a legitimate action of a church to carry out on its own property is not bad enough to enrage you, the idea of million dollar fines for victimless activity should.  It would be difficult to think of a more Christian act than helping the poor.

The rest of the story is here:

Calls for banning videos and blasphemy laws

Cartoon: By Pickering 

Julia Gillard, like President Obama, called for the removal of the ‘controversial’ video, The Innocence of Muslims from YouTube as a kneejerk reaction to the inarticulate, incoherent, and intemperate reaction of the perennially outraged extreme members of that faith.  Appeasement always seems to be the ‘go to’ reaction of politicians, in their dealings with the religion of peace.

Despite the fact that such actions only serve to cause these people to step forward to the next demand, authorities continue backpedaling in their attempts to placate them like a bad parent does with a tantrum prone child.

Ben, from Ben and Bawb’s Blog have come up with a video clip from Reason, Imagine ‘There’s no YouTube’ 

Now that ‘Australia’ in other words, the government is attempting to gain a seat on the UN Security Council, freedom of speech is under real threat here. Apart from the massive cash splash she is using to buy votes for the country, there is a real danger that she could attempt to secure Islamic votes by offering to support their calls for anti blasphemy laws.

The reason for the desperate effort to gain the seat is the need for Labor to get hold of anything that will reflect a little kudos on the party in the run-up to the next federal election. No freedom will be too important to toss into the mix in order to save Labor’s bacon.

Johnson speech at Duke

"I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden" - Barry Goldwater, a real Republican

Until now there has never been a Presidential Nominee with the courage to speak his mind for what he believed right rather than politically expedient quite like Barry Goldwater. Barry was the guy who referred to the Eisenhower Administration as a ‘dime store new deal’, which promised to give the voters all the Democrats promised, but at a discount.

He was for gay rights before it was chic, and warned of the danger and authoritarian nature of the religious right in the party. He was ignored, and now Republicans have to live with the embarrassment of justifying the candidacy of idiots like Todd Akin.

 Would Romney be still dragging his sorry arse around swing states trying to cobble a win together, or cruising to victory, if he was able to make the statement quoted up top?

 Gary Johnson is reminiscent of Goldwater in his speech at Duke University:
Gov Gary Johnson at Duke University from CineFilm Media on Vimeo.

Johnson is not a slick talker like the other Nominees, but is interesting enough to make the 22 minutes of the speech pass fairly quickly. I was fortunate enough to attend an address by 1976 LP Nominee, Roger McBride to the Progress Party in Brisbane way back when, and found him impressive. Johnson is just as good.

Climatists not Fair Dinkum?

By Viv Forbes


"Carbon Sense" 

A "greenhouse gas" is one capable of absorbing infra-red (IR) radiation. 

The most common atmospheric gases with such properties are water vapour and carbon dioxide (CO2). Water vapour is far more abundant with an average of 20,000 parts-per-million (ppm) in the atmosphere compared to just 395 ppm of CO2. Moreover water vapour is more effective as a greenhouse gas because it can absorb IR radiation over far more bands of the IR spectrum. 

Therefore, if man-made CO2 causes dangerous global warming, (a dubious proposition anyway), then man-made water vapour is far more dangerous.

The two main electricity generation fuels in Australia are coal and gas. Coal is a dense fuel with a high carbon content which, when burnt, produces mainly CO2 with some water vapour. Natural gas has more hydrogen and less carbon and produces a higher proportion of water vapour, the main greenhouse gas.

Thus if the climate alarmists are really scared of man-made greenhouse gases, they should be promoting coal instead of gas or systems that need 100% gas backup, such as wind. Gas generates copious quantities of both “greenhouse gases”.

And if they believe a tax on man-made greenhouse gases will control the climate, a tax on steam makes more sense than a tax on carbon dioxide 

Finally, if they want "zero emissions" of either greenhouse gas, the only significant energy sources that qualify are nuclear, hydro and geothermal. Naturally the only one unlikely to prove widely useful in Australia, geothermal, is the only one promoted by the greens. 

Maybe the climatists are not fair dinkum?

Or maybe the whole man-made global warming scare is an unscientific fraud? 

(For a look at how well the IPCC forecasts of dangerous man-made global warming are working out see here: 

Call for a “Muhammad cartoon a day

Daniel Pipes has come up with a novel idea to desensitize Muslims to the perceived insults to their religion. Lets face it; it needs to happen. Things were quiet in Australia over the weekend after Muslim clerics realized just how their lunacy on the previous one, had outraged everyone but the left and its apologists. As result they called for calm, which seems to have worked.

 Here is a short summary of what we saw, and why we are really pissed off:

Image (L) These signs have been around in other countries, especially in Europe where the population like authoritarians demanding that they comply, however this is the first time they have appeared here.  Aussies do not tolerate zealots who make threats; just having Gillard is bad enough.  Calls for beheading are vile.

Image (R) Jihad Girl 

SHE may be the youngest voice of Islamic fundamentalism to be broadcast in Australia. This is a recording of 8-year-old Ruqaya urging other children to join the fight for a global Islamic state. As she sees it, “nobody is too young”. 

Ruqaya delivered her speech to an audience of 600 at a conference called Muslims Rise, hosted by an Islamic group called Hizb ut-Tahrir. It was held in Bankstown in Sydney’s west on Sunday. Muslims Rise advocates the restoration of the Islamic caliphate - a global government for all Muslims, operating under strict sharia law. 

Ruqaya was one of nine speakers in a considerable line-up, which included a controversial keynote from Taji Mustafa, described by the Opposition as a "hate preacher".

Image (L) Mother radicalizing child

An Islamic mother is pictured taking a ‘happy snap’ to send to the folks back home to let them know the kids are being raised the right way.  She is claiming she isn’t dumb, she is ‘university educated’, but just didn’t know what ‘beheading’ meant. 

Breaking her silence almost a week after she created a national stir, the 28-year-old university educated woman claimed she did not know what the word "behead" meant. 

She insisted her eldest child picked up the poster from the ground and waved it above his head, so she took a photograph of him, not comprehending the sinister message portrayed on the sign. "I did not know what beheading was," she said. …

Daniel Pipes is suggesting that all publishers publish the Kurt Westergaard cartoon every day:

On the Islamist side, an individual or group took one of these perceived offenses and turned it into a reason to riot. Khomeini did this with The Satanic Verses and Ahmad Abu Laban did likewise with the Danish cartoons. Hamid Karzai goaded Afghans to riot over burned Korans by American soldiers and Egyptian preacher Khaled Abdullah turned Innocence of Muslims into an international event. 

In brief, any Westerner can buy a Koran for a dollar and burn it, while any Muslim with a platform can transform that act into a fighting offense. As passions rise on both sides of the democratized Western / Muslim divide, Western provocateurs and Islamist hotheads have found each other and confrontations occur with increasing frequency.Which prompts this question: 

What would happen if publishers and managers of major media reached a consensus, "Enough of this intimidation, we will publish the most famous Danish Muhammad cartoon every day until the Islamists tire out and no longer riot"? What would happen if instances of Koran burning happened recurrently?   

Would repetition inspire institutionalization, generate ever-more outraged responses, and offer a vehicle for Islamists to ride to greater power? Or would it lead to routinization, to a wearing out of Islamists, and a realization that violence is counter-productive to their cause? 

I predict the latter, that a Muhammad cartoon published each day, or Koranic desecrations on a quasi-regular basis, will make it harder for Islamists to mobilize Muslim mobs. Were that the case, Westerners could once again treat Islam as they do other religions – freely, to criticize without fear. That would demonstrate to Islamists that Westerners will not capitulate, that they reject Islamic law, that they are ready to stand up for their values. 

So, this is my plea to all Western editors and producers: display the Muhammad cartoon daily until the Islamists get used to the fact that we turn sacred cows into hamburger.

It might just work.

Iranian Cleric claims “Jesus a bastard;” no Christian riots yet.

Images: (L) Ahmadinejad (by Steve Breen); 

Grand Ayatollah Vapid Khorasani (Ol Sweetness and Light) an Iranian senior cleric, who is somewhat upset at the YouTube video ‘The Innocence of Muslims’ has launched into his own tirade against Christianity, claiming that Jesus was a bastard who only became important because of Muhammad.  Muslims are currently campaigning for an international law against blasphemy at the UN.

Irony seems to be lost on this idiot: 

Grand Ayatollah Vahid Khorasani, a prominent Shi’ite source of emulation and a Twelver [your guess is a good as mine], condemning the insult to the Prophet, not only insulted Pope Benedict XVI but also Jesus and Miriam, stating that if it were not for the Quran, Jesus would not be worthy of God’s heavens, according to a story by WND. 

Khorasani, in a long statement quoting several verses from the Quran published Friday in Hawzah News, the official site of the seminaries in Qom, Iran, claims the only reason Jesus is regarded as holy is due to the Quran and Muhammad.  

“Hey, clueless pope who has chosen silence (on the Muhammad video), answer this: If there was no Quran, then as the Bible and the Torah have it, Jesus the son of Miriam is a bastard and a bastard will be forbidden from the heavens of God, and so the high place of Jesus is due to the existence of the Prophet Muhammad as the last prophet by God,” Khorasani said. …  

… The Quran, the last book of God, removed the burden of “adultery” from Miriam and sanctified the birth of Jesus, Khorasani said. “The ignorant Christians burn the Quran and don’t understand that the result will be that Jesus becomes an illegitimate child.” 

After an exhaustive search of the media and net, there does not appear to be any spontaneous Christian fundamentalist riots around the world, and as yet, enraged Catholics have not mercilessly slaughtered any Muslims.  Coptic demonstrators have not yet stormed the Iranian Embassies in Cairo and Libya, and angry Lutherans are not burning Paris, London, Berlin, and New York. 

We are still waiting for Prime Minister Gillard or President Obama to call for his comments to be withdrawn as they did for the video.

Amish case demonstrates danger of hate crimes laws

The Amish have a longstanding reputation for non-violence, which was torn apart recently by a series of assaults.  A sect led by Samuel Mullet Sr was responsible for invading homes of rivals, assaulting them and cutting off the hair and beards of their victims.  To Amish, long hair and beards are part of their religious observance.

Normally the charges relating to the offences described would be quite serious and would result in slammer time.  On this occasion though, the federal government decided to get in on the act with charges of ‘hate crimes’ added to the mix.  NYT feels that the guilty verdicts were a ‘vindication’ of this action: 

The convictions of Mr. Mullet, along with several relatives and others from his settlement who carried out the assaults, could bring lengthy prison terms. The verdicts were a vindication for federal prosecutors, who made a risky decision to apply a 2009 federal hate-crimes law to the sect’s violent efforts to humiliate Amish rivals.

Defense lawyers in the case and an independent legal expert had argued that the government was overreaching by turning a personal vendetta within the Amish community, and related attacks, into a federal hate-crimes case. But the jury accepted the prosecutors’ description of the attacks as an effort to suppress the victims’ practice of religion, finding Mr Mullet and the other defendants guilty on nearly all the charges they faced of conspiracy, hate crimes and obstruction of justice. … 

… The defendants did not deny their roles in the attacks, which were carried out with battery-powered clippers, scissors and razor-sharp shears that are designed to trim horse manes. Rather, the case turned on the motives for the attacks and whether it was appropriate to make them into a major federal case under a 2009 hate-crimes law. 

To prove the most serious charges, the jurors had to be convinced that the defendants had caused “bodily injury,” which could mean “disfigurement,” and that the attacks were based mainly on religious differences. …

The idea of ‘hate crimes’ has come into being because governments have been persuaded that some victims, mainly minorities in ethnicity, faith, sexual preferences, etc, possess a greater degree of victimhood than others.  In such cases politicians believe that any thoughts that can be assumed to be running through the head of the perpetrator should be punished severely.  Essentially, a ‘hate crime’ is similar to a thought crime.

The result of the perceived thoughts that may have been in play during these offences is that where the penalty would have been several years behind bars, depending on the discretion of the court, it is suggested that the defendants could end up doing decades in prison.  The action of the government in insisting on this is damn near as weird as the actions of the perpetrators, given that the whole thing was little more than a religious argument between fellow cult members that got out of hand.

In any case, the assertion by NYT that the guilty verdict 'vindicates the action of the Justice Department is a crock.  Something that is vindicated is proven to be right or justified, something that is conspicuously absent here.  It has been proven that the feds can do this to people, whether it is right or justifiable to actually go ahead and do it is entirely another matter.

There is more on this over at Reason. 

AMA calls for minimum drinking age of 25

The Australian Medical Association’s call for the minimum drinking age to be lifted to 25 years of age is starting to make it sound like the Mayor Bloomberg fan club.  For all of living memory Australians have been bombarded with warnings of dire consequences of foodstuffs, drinks, barbeques, motorbikes, staying out late, beer, spirits, wine, women, and even song, especially rock and roll.

While a number of these have been reversed over the years, and sometimes reinstated again, they were until the rise of the nanny state basically advisory.  Since then though, the do-gooders, authoritarians, know-it-alls, assorted food fascists, and fetishists, and behavior zealots have demanded their ‘right’ to make us comply with their ever growing wish lists. 

 The AMA has long been at the forefront of the ‘Ve haf vays of making you healthy’ brigade, and the current call is not much sillier than usual: 

THE legal drinking age should be lifted to 25 to stop young people becoming addicted to alcohol and limit the violence associated with drunkenness, the head of the nation's peak medical organisation says. AMA president Dr Steve Hambleton said the human brain was still developing until the age of 25 and alcohol earlier could change a person's addictive potential.

"We know the human brain does not stop developing at 18 or 21 - its actually 25 - so if we start digging out the evidence about when people should be exposed to alcohol it's actually 25 years of age, not 18," he said. The call came as a summit of 70 doctors, academics and public health organisations in Canberra yesterday called for new regulations to control alcohol advertising aimed at young people and ban alcohol sponsorship of sport.

The conference was told Tim Tams and chips were being laced with alcohol flavouring, children taking part in life-saving courses were being dressed in hats and towels covered with alcohol labels, and youngsters were becoming "friends" with the Bundy bear and other alcohol websites.

There is nothing wrong with holding an opinion on the age where drinking alcohol is appropriate or safe.  It is probably a well-informed view coming from such a body as the AMA, although it has been wrong before, and moderate alcohol consumption has been linked to some beneficial effects. 

The problem arises when it goes past advice and becomes lobbying government for prohibition against young adults who are perfectly capable of listening to advice and making their own decisions.  No form of prohibition has ever worked as has been witnessed by the attempt in the US in the 20^th century, through to the continuing ‘war on drugs’.  

The references to ‘alcohol flavored Tim Tams is nebulous at best, although liquor flavored confectionary has been around forever.  Nobody has ever gotten pissed on rum and raisin chocolate.  As for Bundy Bear, the advertising logo of Bundaberg Rum, he’s a loveable guy, much smarter than the people he mixes with, and is not a threat to the nation’s youth.

If the AMA are seriously contemplating banning the liquor industry from sponsoring the surf lifesavers, they will be doing that group no favors.  Should it wish for such a ban, perhaps its members would be good enough to provide the same level of sponsorship as is currently provided by that industry.  That is not what they will propose though.  They will want the taxpayer to pick up the tab while they self righteously pat themselves on the back.