Australian PM will answer questions soon!


We won a poll to determine what questions Julia Gillard would have to answer — or try to slickly dodge — and she’s going to be doing it live on the web at 11am AEST … which is in about a half hour! Go to the Deakins University channel for live streaming.

Oh, by the way — while we voted entirely fairly and within the parameters of the poll, I am still getting a lot of hate mail and a few tweets from wingnuts bitterly complaining about how we “stacked the vote” (I think that means “outvoted”) and how it was more American imperialism. Sorry, guys, we voted on an atheist issue, and we atheists are global, and besides, atheists are a larger percentage of the Australian population than the American. So suck it up.

Also, your pal Andrew Bolt is an inflamed dingleberry denialist, so scientists (another international community) were quite happy to see his global warming denial FUD squeezed out of the victory circle. Ha ha and all that. Stuff it, pseudoscientists.

Comments

  1. bvganfematheist says

    Although I used my 7 votes for a different question which didn’t get up about asylum seeker children in detention centres, which is something I’m also very passionate about, I am glad this question is being asked. That money is being spent on this in our public school system is abhorrent to me. Whether it results in any truth being told remains to be seen though as she is beholden to some Catholic MPs who have enabled her to succeed in her leadership challenge.

  2. 'Tis Himself says

    Also, your pal Andrew Bolt is an inflamed dingleberry denialist

    Bolt denies dingleberries? He must be very thorough and precise with his wiping.

  3. imthegenieicandoanything says

    “Also, your pal Andrew Bolt is an inflamed dingleberry denialist.”

    What a softie you are! I mean, he’s a good piece worse than that, after all.

  4. joed says

    Wow, PM Gillard is a great politician and she knows it too! Always answer the question you want to be asked.

  5. smithy says

    In his follow up question he should have said, “I understand the need for social/youth workers in schools, but why do you require them to be religious?”

  6. joed says

    Jacques Derrida
    Deconstruction – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    Deconstruction is a form of semiotic analysis, derived mainly from French philosopher Jacques Derrida’s 1967 work Of Grammatology. Derrida proposed the deconstruction …
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction

  7. ChasCPeterson says

    wut

    Did somebody appoint joed the local G**gle M*nkey?

    (and why the Derrida reference anyhow?)

  8. lsamaknight says

    And the response boiled down to the fact they have introduced a qualifications requirement to the program and getting positive feedback from teachers and principals. She completely skated around the issue of why this couldn’t be just as easily accomplished by a non-religious counseling program instead of religiously based chaplains.

    Not really unexpected all facts told. Given the way she’s squeezed between the greens and more conservative independents and WA Nationals to hold onto a majority in the lower house I pretty much expected an exercise in being as bland and uncontroversial as possible.

  9. Sophia, Michelin-starred General of the First Mediterranean Iron Chef Batallion says

    Eh… I’m not even going to bother with the answers, as for very obvious reasons they’ll be in PollieSpeak – IE waffle with no real substance.
    What I do take away from this exercise is that the government has been alerted to three issues that the public are really quite pissed off about. The actual answers are immaterial.

  10. John Morales says

    Gah I hate videos.

    (Part of it is my low bandwidth (yes, if I could I would get more, but alas I live in a rural area), part of it is there is no fucking indexing of it!)

    Anyone who has waded through this: at what time-stamp in the video does Gillard address the school-chaplain question?

  11. John Morales says

    smithy, thank you!

    (Stupid, stupid me: I imagined one of the top three questions would be one of the first few to be addressed!)

  12. Jem says

    and why the Derrida reference anyhow?

    There was a Derrida book behind Gillard during the conversation. Still not sure what the point in copy/pasting Wikipedia’s deconstruction article is, though…

  13. F says

    It was covered in the first sentence, but yeah, I am slightly hoping for some real answers. Gillard coulda been great.

  14. empiricallyyours says

    The :dingleberry denialist” questions were still asked and answered. Starting at the 15 min mark. Not sure about the asylum seeker children in detention centres question though. Maybe that too will be asked.

    Only just made it past the Bolt dolt and his absurd question.

    Meanwhile in New Zealand:

    BIBLE IN SCHOOLS SPOKESMAN LIES ON BREAKFAST.

    Churches Education Commission’s Simon Greening claims his Religious Instruction program is approved by the Ministry of Education. This is false. CEC Bible classes use a legal loophole known as the ‘Nelson Dodge’ to close schools only for the duration of Bible class, this allows unapproved subject matter into the classroom and is done outside the normal protections of the Education Act.
    The Bible in Schools group has previous breeched the Advertising Standards Authority rules for making this exact same claim, who called the claim “exaggerated and misleading”…

    (2007 breach)
    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10434374

    (2012 breach)
    Simon Greening – “We use a curriculum that has already been approved by the Ministry of Education”. TV-ONE Breakfast, Wed 18th July 2012. At time 21:27 in this clip
    http://tvnz.co.nz/breakfast/2012-07-18-video-4974509

    https://www.facebook.com/KeepReligionOutOfSchoolNZ

    For any Kiwi’s *cough* wishing to voice their complaint over this further breach of our advertising standards, you can do so online here.

    http://www.asa.co.nz/complaint_form.php

  15. epikt says

    ‘Tis Himself:

    Also, your pal Andrew Bolt is an inflamed dingleberry denialist

    Bolt denies dingleberries? He must be very thorough and precise with his wiping.

    I thought the current wingnut position is that dingleberries do exist, but they aren’t human-caused.

  16. says

    Oh come on! The third (I think) question asked was the one about the amount in thousands of degres the temperature would drop thanks to the carbon tax etc. Yeah, the question that was outvoted.

    What was really the point of the poll then?

  17. marcus says

    She should have just said “political expediency” and then STFU. This was the only bit I watched but I assume this was her real answer to all of the questions. “Gillard coulda been great.” Indeed. So sad.

  18. says

    wingnuts bitterly complaining about… American imperialism

    Does anyone know where I can get a good deal on a new irony meter? Mine just shot a spring coil clear across the room.

    Epikt:

    I thought the current wingnut position is that dingleberries do exist, but they aren’t human-caused.

    Wrong. It’s that Al Gore made up dingleberries so he could get rich from pro-hygiene propaganda and stock his 5,348 mansions with gold-leaf toilet paper. Real ‘Murkins don’t wipe.

  19. says

    Ms. Daisy Cutter, Vile Human Being:

    Wrong. It’s that Al Gore made up dingleberries so he could get rich from pro-hygiene propaganda and stock his 5,348 mansions with gold-leaf toilet paper. Real ‘Murkins don’t wipe.

    Since the only alternative to wiping that I know of is the Frenchified pansy-ass bidet, I would suggest that wiping is the ONLY option for real ‘murkins.