Notes: Saturday, July 2-Wednesday, November 30, 2016

1. A couple of recent items regarding The High Court of Australia

1.1 Dr. Maley on the High Court's Gay Marriage ruling

See The Centre for Independent Studies' (C.I.S.'s) Occasional Paper 147 The High Court, Democracy and Same Sex Marriage, by Dr. Barry Maley (a Senior Fellow at The C.I.S.), published by The C.I.S., Sydney, July 2016:

https://www.cis.org.au/publications/occasional-papers/the-high-court-democracy-and-same-sex-marriage

or go straight hither:

https://www.cis.org.au/app/uploads/2016/07/op147.pdf

(That Paper came to my attention via Dr. Maley's opinion piece "DEFINITION NOT MADE IN HEAVEN" on p. 12 in the "COMMENTARY" pages of The Australian, Tuesday, July 26, 2016, Second Edition, No. 16100, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited, available at The C.I.S.'s website under the headline "Marriage deserves a referendum, not a quickie plebiscite", with the same date:

https://www.cis.org.au/commentary/articles/marriage-deserves-a-referendum-not-a-quickie-plebiscite

Labels: Constitution, G.L.B.T., H.C.A., law, marriage

1.2 The plebiscites in 1898 and ’99 which "were held in each of the Australian colonies to ensure that the people approved of the Constitution before it was enacted in Britain" "are treated by the High Court as part of the basis for popular sovereignty in Australia."

The quotations in that headline come from the opinion piece "Plebiscite a casualty in the debate over marriage laws", by Prof. Anne Twomey (a Professor of Constitutional Law at The University of Sydney), dated October 7, 2016, downloaded from (behind the paywall at) The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/plebiscite-a-casualty-in-the-debate-over-marriage-laws/news-story/7847b6a78619996ac6435e78c30d59ec

(That article came to my attention via the version printed on p. 28 in the "LEGAL AFFAIRS" pages of The Australian, Friday, October 7, 2016, Second Edition, No. 16163, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited; if I recall correctly, the headline was "Let's not demonise plebiscites in the heat of the debate over our marriage laws".)

Labels: H.C.A., morals

2. "The Australian Business and Community Network (ABCN) Scholarship Foundation will award 20 scholarships for disadvantaged students in 2016. The ABCN Scholarship Foundation, at the request of our donors, allocates some scholarships in specific categories including Indigenous, refugee, LGBTI and State-based scholarships. … Early in 2016, the Citi Pride network proposed raising funds to support a student identifying as LGBTI, in recognition of additional challenges faced by LGBTI students in their senior years of schooling. The scholarship is funded by individual donations from Citi and other corporate employees, with Citi matching individual donations."

The quotation, excluding my ellipsis, in that headline comes from the "ABCN Scholarship Foundation Statement August 2016", available for download from the "News and Media Releases" webpage at the A.B.C.N.'s website:

https://www.abcn.com.au/about-us/news-and-media-releases

Or go straight hither:

https://www.abcn.com.au/sites/default/files/ABCN%20Scholarship%20Foundation%20Statement%20August%202016.pdf

See also item 6.3 of this issue of "Notes".

Labels: education, G.L.B.T.

3. "The first stage of the National Domestic and Family Violence Bench Book is available on the Australasian Institute of Judicial Administration's website."

The quotation, including its hyperlink, in that headline comes from the media release "New resource to assist victims of family violence", dated August 18, 2016, downloaded from the official website of the Attorney-General for Australia (The Hon. Sen. George Brandis Q.C.):

https://www.attorneygeneral.gov.au/Mediareleases/Pages/2016/ThirdQuarter/New-resource-to-assist-victims-of-family-violence.aspx

Labels: feminism

4. H.M. Victorian Government's Resilience, Rights and Respectful Relationships 'learning resources' are available here:

http://www.education.vic.gov.au/about/programs/health/Pages/teaching-and-learning-materials.aspx

Or go straight hither:

http://fuse.education.vic.gov.au/ResourcePackage/ByPin?pin=2JZX4R

See also the Media Release "Victoria Leading The Way On Respectful Relationships", dated October 10, 2016, attributed to the Victorian Minister for Education (The Hon. James Merlino M.P.), downloaded from the official Premier of Victoria website:

http://www.premier.vic.gov.au/victoria-leading-the-way-on-respectful-relationships/

(and also available under the same headline (though with all the letters capitalised) and with the same date at Mr. Merlino's own website:

http://www.jamesmerlino.com.au/media-releases/victoria-leading-the-way-on-respectful-relationships/)

Labels: education, feminism, G.L.B.T., morals, multiculturalism, relativism, Victoria

5. Dr. Morrall on a supposed change in Christian political philosophy:

… The ‘conventional’ notion of many Christian thinkers about human government as part remedy, part punishment for the Fall of Man, led to a depreciatory view of political institutions and activity.
The position began to change round about the time of the economic, social and cultural revivals of the tenth and subsequent centuries. With the loss of distrust for human reason and its achievements came a gradual strengthening of belief in the natural character of political life as beneficial for man and corresponding to an inherent need of his being. Classical sources familiar to the medieval philosophers of the twelfth century, particularly Cicero and the Timaeus dialogue by Plato, had spoken of Nature as the inspiration of the life of men in society. But the biggest single source of the revival of belief in the naturalness of political activity was the return of knowledge of Roman Law as collected by Justinian in his Corpus of Civil Law. This was beginning to be studied in the Italian legal schools, particularly Bologna, in the eleventh century. Throughout the Middle Ages Bologna was to remain the great centre of legal studies for both Civil and Canon Law.
[italics in the original, my ellipsis (and deleted dashes where a word spanned two lines; for the original format of the text, see the Appendix to this post),
pp. 158 f., Ch. 6 ("EPILOGUE: MEDIEVAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS DILEMMA"), The Medieval Imprint: The Founding of the Western European Tradition, by John B. Morrall, published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1970]

Labels: morals

6. Prof. van Onselen, approvingly (or at least sympathetically), on Conservativism as Retarded Progressivism: "Conservatism in its purest form is about slowing down the pace of change to ensure that adjustments in policy settings when they do happen are well thought through."

(Note that by using the word 'retarded' I intend no allusion to what is these days called being developmentally delayed.) The quotation in that headline comes from the opinion piece "Fringe-dwelling reactionaries tarnish true conservatism", by Prof. Peter van Onselen, dated October 22, 2016, downloaded from (behind the paywall at) The Australian's website:

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/peter-van-onselen/fringedwelling-reactionaries-tarnish-true-conservatism/news-story/84662346c74564581fd974b3d61873df

(That article came to my attention via the version printed under the same headline (though with all the letters capitalised), with the same author, on p. 22 in the "COMMENTARY" pages of the "INQUIRER" section of The Weekend Australian, October 22-23, 2016, First Edition, No. 16176, ISSN 1038-8761, published by Nationwide News Pty. Limited.)

Labels: liberalism

7. "It’s always been the case that the scheme has been designed, and these changes are also designed, to try and ensure that as many mothers are participating in the workforce and are able to re-participate after the birth of a child, having provided for a fair amount of time to bond with the child after birth." (The scheme in question is H.M.A. Government's paid maternity leave scheme.)

The quotation in that headline is attributed to the Federal Minister for Social Services (The Hon. Christian Porter M.P.) in the interview transcript "ABC Radio National Breakfast with Fran Kelly", dated October 24, 2016, downloaded from Mr. Porter's Ministerial website:

http://christianporter.dss.gov.au/transcripts/abc-radio-national-breakfast-with-fran-kelly-0

Labels: economic rationalism, economics, family, feminism, P.P.L., tax, work

Reginaldvs Cantvar
St. Andrew's Day, A.D. 2016

Appendix: Item 5's quotation in its original format:

[p. 158]
… The ‘conven-
tional’ notion of many Christian thinkers about human
government as part remedy, part punishment for the
Fall of Man, led to a depreciatory view of political in-
stitutions and activity.
The position began to change round about the time
of the economic, social and cultural revivals of the tenth
and subsequent centuries. With the loss of distrust for
human reason and its achievements came a gradual
strengthening of belief in the natural character of poli-
tical life as beneficial for man and corresponding to an
[p. 159]
inherent need of his being. Classical sources familiar to
the medieval philosophers of the twelfth century, par-
ticularly Cicero and the Timaeus dialogue by Plato, had
spoken of Nature as the inspiration of the life of men
in society. But the biggest single source of the revival of
belief in the naturalness of political activity was the re-
turn of knowledge of Roman Law as collected by Justin-
ian in his Corpus of Civil Law. This was beginning to be
studied in the Italian legal schools, particularly Bolog-
na, in the eleventh century. Throughout the Middle
Ages Bologna was to remain the great centre of legal
studies for both Civil and Canon Law.
[italics in the original, my ellipsis; note that, in the original, the first line of the second paragraph was indented,
pp. 158 f., Ch. 6 ("EPILOGUE: MEDIEVAL GOVERNMENT AND ITS DILEMMA"), The Medieval Imprint: The Founding of the Western European Tradition, by John B. Morrall, published by Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1970]