http://au.news.yahoo.com/latest/a/-/latest/13505678/abbott-slippery-on-slipper-s...

The federal government has seized on Opposition Leader Tony Abbott's "slippery" response to suggestions of Liberal Party involvement in the allegations against Peter Slipper.

Mr Abbott on Tuesday insisted he did not believe any coalition personnel were aware of the case against the former Liberal turned independent MP before details appeared in the media on Saturday.

But he admitted he could not categorically rule out the possibility that someone in the coalition had played a role in the case's preparation.

"I think there are something like 100,000 members of the Liberal and National parties right around Australia," Mr Abbott told reporters in Sydney.

"Can I guarantee that no-one had any role, anywhere, in anything?

"Look, the important thing is that the prime minister put this individual into the speaker's chair."

Mr Abbott said ultimately he was "not accountable" for the actions of people outside his parliamentary team.

Mr Slipper stood down as speaker of parliament's lower house pending a possible criminal investigation into claims he misused taxpayer-funded Cabcharge vouchers.

He strenuously denies the allegations, as well as civil claims he sexually harassed male staffer James Hunter Ashby.

Treasurer Wayne Swan was quick to seize on Mr Abbott's comments.

"Mr Abbott today has been very slippery in his response to a number of questions about these matters," he told reporters in Canberra.

But asked if he had any evidence to back up suggestions of a link, Mr Swan said: "All I'd say is, if you're as quick with the mud bucket as Mr Abbott is, you'd better be pretty clean yourself."

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis said there was "absolutely no reason" to doubt the bona fides of Mr Ashby's case.

Senator Brandis has called on the government to ensure taxpayers will not be forced to pay the costs of Mr Slipper's legal defence.

"The opposition does not consider that the commonwealth - in other words, taxpayers - should be liable to pay Mr Slipper's costs in these circumstances," He said in a letter to Attorney-General Nicola Roxon.

The government believes Mr Slipper should be able to return to the speaker's chair if he is cleared of the criminal allegations, even if the civil claims remain unresolved.

But that looks increasingly unlikely after several crossbench MPs made it clear they want all the allegations resolved before he returns to the job.

"I am of the strong view that Peter Slipper should not resume the speaker's chair until all of the allegations against him are dealt with, including the allegation of sexual harassment," Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie said in a statement late on Tuesday afternoon.

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon said returning Mr Slipper to the speaker's job would be politically fraught for the government.

"There's a question for the government - do they want the political certainty of keeping him on the Speaker's chair or do they want to wear political pain," Senator Xenophon told Sky News.

In Singapore, Prime Minister Julia Gillard angrily rejected Mr Abbott's suggestion that she and her government were not taking the sexual harassment allegations seriously.

"That's a disgraceful allegation and it's exactly what we expect from Mr Abbott - continued negativity," she said.

Former Labor leader Mark Latham said the party's moral core had been eroded by its defence of Mr Slipper and embattled MP Craig Thomson.

He described Mr Slipper as one of the parliament's least respected figures, whose "clownish foibles" were well known to all.

"He is one of the most egregious Good-Time Charlies to ever prance around the edges of Australian politics," he wrote in Fairfax newspapers.

Slipper was actually put into Parliament by the Liberal Party.....If Labor support him after he is exposed as a low life religious conservative they have no one to blame but themselves.....They should dump him now that the truth has come out.....If they support Slipper now they are no better than the Liberal Party!!!

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 24^th, 2012 at 8:21pm:


In November 2006, New South Wales Premier Morris Iemma sacked Milton Orkopoulos after he was charged with child sex and other offences. The following week, he resigned as MP for the state electorate of Swansea.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/ex-mp-orkopoulos-gets-hefty-jail-term/story...

Unlike Peter Hollingworth who was made Governor General by John Howard and had to resign in disgrace when Howard failed to act???

Hollingworth: the true scandal

May 3 2003

The Governor-General did not only fail in his duty to victims, he supported the perpetrator, writes Muriel Porter.

American scholar of Scripture Luke Timothy Johnson has denounced the churches' tendency to cover up cases of sexual abuse to protect their reputations. The true scandal is not public shame or bad publicity, he writes in a recent edition of the English Catholic magazine Priests and People. Rather, it is the churches' willingness to "protect the predators who destroy the lives of children".

Johnson reminds his readers that, for Jesus, those who harmed the vulnerable were "scandalous", and deserving of God's condemnation.

The inquiry into sexual abuse in the Anglican diocese of Brisbane has exposed a deeply disturbing case of the church seeking to protect a pedophile priest and the church's good name, despite the protestations of his victims.

John Elliot was allowed to continue as rector of a parish during the 1990s by the then archbishop of Brisbane and now Governor-General, Peter Hollingworth, even though Hollingworth was aware the man was a pedophile. Last year, Elliot was jailed after pleading guilty to multiple sexual abuse charges from the 1970s, before he became an Anglican priest. In February this year his jail sentence was extended after he pleaded guilty to the abuse brought to Hollingworth's attention in 1993.

The Governor-General has admitted he made a "serious error of judgement" in allowing Elliot to continue as rector of the parish of Dalby, and has apologised to the family involved for his handling of the issue. But a close examination of the Brisbane report reveals that the bald fact of allowing the priest to remain in office is only part of the problem. It can be construed from the report that Hollingworth allowed him to stay to protect the priest's financial interests and to safeguard the church's reputation.



http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/05/02/1051382093269.html

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
Steven Weinberg (1933 - ), quoted in The New York Times, April 20, 1999

Howard his own victim

May 28 2003

John Howard is very good at assuming the role of victim.

Over the past 24 hours, he has been doing his best "they're picking on me" routine.

Yesterday, at least one national columnist agreed that Opposition Leader Simon Crean had "more than" implied that Howard condoned pedophilia.

Yesterday, Howard was all mock indignation.

He told John Laws: "To allege that in some way when asked about child abuse matters I resorted to technical legalisms, when, if you read the full transcript of that press conference, was recorded my total repugnance or distaste of [it] . . . along with 99.99 per cent of the community."

As if revulsion at child abuse and obscuring it in legalisms were mutually exclusive and that Labor, by pointing to one, had accused him of the other.

No one has accused Howard of condoning child sex except, obliquely, himself. No one says he protects pedophiles, but he protected a man who did.

Howard's tactic worked sufficiently well that Crean found it necessary to tell the caucus that he had not accused Howard of being soft on child abuse. His rhetoric has softened.

But let's not focus on what Howard hasn't been accused of, rather on what he has - a disinterest in policies to protect children and families.

In question time, Labor's Nicola Roxon noted that the budget allocated only $4 million to child abuse prevention programs, which was underspent by nearly $500,000 last year.

She also asked why the Government "had underspent womens' and domestic violence programs to such an extent that the Government could divert $10 million of this money to its terrorism fridge magnet campaign".

The money will be restored, Howard said.

But the point was why was the program so underspent that the Government could borrow a year's worth of funding?

Roxon asked why his Government had long "underspent, cut and diverted funds" from child abuse and domestic violence programs.

And that question - whether the Government is soft on child protection - is utterly legitimate.

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/27/1053801397570.html

The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.
Ayn Rand (1905 - 1982), Atlas Shrugged, 1957

philperth2010 wrote on Apr 24^th, 2012 at 9:12pm:


because the actual RAPE of children is the same thing as failing to report it?

idiot.

longweekend58 wrote on Apr 25^th, 2012 at 12:45pm:


What about covering it up and failing to act on serious claims of child sexual abuse......You have no credibility Longy!!!

Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.
Euripides (484 BC - 406 BC), The Bacchae, circa 407 B.C.

philperth2010 wrote on Apr 25^th, 2012 at 1:10pm:


Im too concenred the the ALPs procession of actul child rapists to be particularly concerned over Howards behaviour over an even he had nothing whatseover to do with. Clean up you own party and when you can go 10 years without a ALP MP going to jail for child sex offences then we can talk About Howard. BTW another one is going to jail here in SA later this year, so it could be a while.

Longy wrote......
Quote:


I do not give a stuff what you care about actually.....My point is Howard supported Hollingworth despite serious allegations against him and in the end was proven to be wrong as Hollingworth resigned in disgrace.....Now was Howard wrong to support Hollingworth based on allegations or did Howard do the right thing until the allegations where proven.....Remember we are talking about someone covering up child sexual abuse here whilst holding the highest position in the land and having the support of the Prime Minister.....Hypocrisy thy name is Longweekend!!!

We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach.
Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970), Sceptical Essays (1928), "Eastern and Western Ideals of Happiness"