Here's the top-most-commented page wherein it is argued, the MacBank employee got off too lightly.
No one with a heart can help feeling sorry for David Kiely, the hapless Macquarie stockbroker caught viewing near-naked images of Miranda Kerr on his work computer. Needless to say, it would be grossly unfair for Kiely to be disciplined more severely than normal by his employer simply because he was unlucky enough to be caught doing so live on Seven News, in a clip that has now amused millions of viewers around the globe.
What's more, these kinds of sexually provocative images of women are so ubiquitous that it's completely understandable that many are left thinking, "What's the big deal?" With rather more sexually explicit images regularly confronting us all on billboards and the magazine stands in convenience stores and petrol stations, it might be hard to work up too much outrage over a picture of Kerr directing a gentle come-hither look over her modestly shielded naked breasts.
But that doesn't mean that Kiely's behaviour should be dismissed as the harmless manifestation of red-blooded maleness, or that objections to it should be decried as ''wowserism'' or over-the-top political correctness. At a time when business leaders are wringing their hands over the dearth of women in finance and executive management roles, it's worth considering how sexually explicit images of women affect us, and what kind of message they send in the workplace.
Got that? The semi-nude picture on Kiely's personal monitor at work - which just happened to go out to the public by his own stupidity - is a symbol for the unreconstructed sexism everywhere. What does this Cordelia Fine woman want? She's not a wowser but she presumably wants more public humiliation for David Kiely. Like, yeah, that'll be politically correct.
Personally, I find the Feminist wowserism to be just another kind of wowserism, probably because it always seems to emanate from White women with status and money.
If the Obama election told us anything, it's that when both gender and race are talking points, gender issues get overstated in order to push race issues to the back and the people who argue this most vehemently are white women. Make of that what you will, but the SMH sort of misses it by lining it up with this one:
The second top-most-commented page is this one:
There are two pragmatic tests to ascertain the real level of racism in a country. Namely, the level of ethnic-motivated crime and the amount of inter-marriage between ethnic groups. Australia has a low level of ethnic crime and a high level of inter-marriages between all races, including indigenous people.
There is racism in every country. But Australia is not a racist nation. Certainly not when compared with societies where racism is, or has been, rife. The myth of Australia as racist has been promulgated by alienated leftist academics in Australia, who just happen to be employed in universities that are examples of tolerant multiculturalism at work.
From time to time a litany of journalists, actors, directors and the like join in the Australia-is-racist chorus. There is invariably a spike in such collective apologia around Australia Day. Among the voices heard this year was Warwick Thornton, the director of the widely acclaimed film Samson & Delilah.
Thornton told ABC TV News on January 24 that the Eureka flag will be like the swastika in 20 years' time. In other words, according to Thornton, Australia is so racist it is just two decades away from Nazism, or at least fascism. Yet Thornton, who has an indigenous background, is a successful Australian whose work has been supported by the taxpayer through Screen Australia. His brilliant career, so far, suggests that Australia is anything but in pre-fascist mode.
So Gerard Henderson, a well-to-do middle-aged white guy with money and status is telling us that Warwick Thornton is wrong when he says Australian society is racist.
Again, I think Warwick Thornton not being the white suburban guy with all the social perks that go with it, gets to make the call; not you, Mr. Henderson. The rest of the article is just you saying stuff that you find ideal. The real world is far from your ideal.
The utter lack of humility by both Cordelia Fine and Gerard Henderson makes me gag. Maybe it's just the way columns have to be - stupidly single-minded and oblivious to the nuances of what is being argued.
I just thought I'd point that out before people sort of got the impression from the SMH that Australian society isn't racist at all but were decidedly sexist to the point of no redemption.
Malcolm Turnbull Fighting On
This is tragic.
Giving his first parliamentary speech since losing the Liberal leadership in December, Mr Turnbull indicated he would cross the floor to vote with Labor when a vote was taken on the carbon pollution reduction scheme.
Mr Turnbull was scathing of the Coalition's new direct-action policy, which aims to provide financial incentives to industry for reducing carbon emissions.
"We all know ... that industry and businesses attended by an army of lobbyists are particularly persuasive and all too effective at getting their sticky fingers into the taxpayer's pocket," he told Parliament today.
"Having the government pick projects for subsidy is a recipe for fiscal recklessness on a grand scale.
"And there will always be a temptation for projects to be selected for their political appeal."
A handful of Liberal MPs, including treasury spokesman Joe Hockey, were present in the chamber during Mr Turnbull's speech.
The government allowed Mr Turnbull an additional 10 minutes to complete his speech as other MPs, including climate change sceptic Wilson Tuckey, wandered into the lower house ahead of a maiden speech by first-time MP Kelly O'Dwyer.
Mr Turnbull said his strong and long-standing personal commitment to an emissions trading scheme prevented him from voting against the government legislation.
(edit)
"Prudence demands that we act to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and do so in a way that is consistent with, and promotes global action to do the same," he said.
"All of us here are accountable, not just to our constituents, but to the generations that will come after them and after us," he said, adding it was Parliament's job to legislate for the nation's long-term future.
It was positive that both sides of Parliament had agreed to at least a 5 per cut in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, he said.
"But it is not enough to say that you support these cuts, you must also deliver a strong, credible policy framework that will deliver them."
Without a strong climate change policy, Australia could not expect other countries, such as China and India, to heed the call to tackle global warming, he said.
Mr Turnbull said his arguments in favour of the ETS now were "no different to those I have made and stood for, for the last three years".
Schemes, like that proposed by Mr Abbott, which would give millions of taxpayers' dollars to selected new technologies, were "neither economically efficient nor environmentally effective" compared with a market-based approach.
It's really weird it's come to this, but weirder still, Tony Abbott is getting a lot of loony support for his Claytons Climate policy. There are a lot of wishful people out there, trying to wish away the cumulative consequences of humanity's actions.
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