Kevin bloody Andrews
As a companion piece to rossleigh’s excellent article, I thought it might be useful to have a closer look at our Social Services Minister, Kevin Andrews.As a backbencher, Andrews authored the Euthanasia Laws Bill 1996 to
overrule Northern Territory legislation that legalised euthanasia (the
Rights of the Terminally Ill Act 1995).
Andrews also called for an end to trials of the RU-486 drug and voted
against a bill that took away the Health Minister’s power to veto
applications to allow the drug to be used.
In taking a stance against stem cell research in 2002, he stated
that it was the “first time” that “human beings can be treated as a
commodity”. He also took a stance against stem cell research during a
debate in 2006, which resulted in the overturning of a previous ban on
the research.
As the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations, he was
responsible for introducing the Howard Government’s major changes to
industrial relations law in 2005, commonly known as WorkChoices.
Andrews is a member of the Lyons Forum, a socially conservative
Christian faction within the Coalition. He has served as the Forum
Secretary and is credited with suggesting the name for the faction.
As Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Andrews attracted
controversy after he revoked on character grounds the visa of Dr Mohamed
Haneef, who had been granted bail on charges of aiding terrorists.
After the Director of Public Prosecutions dropped all charges against
Haneef, Andrews refused calls to reinstate Haneef’s visa, stating that
his personal evidence was still valid. Andrews’ justification of his
decision, on the basis that he had a reasonable suspicion that Haneef
had associated with suspected terrorists and therefore failed the test
of good character that a person must pass to keep a visa, was rejected
in the Federal Court, and the revocation of Haneef’s visa was
overturned. However in November, e-mails released under the Freedom of
Information act appeared to indicate that Andrews’ office had a plan to
revoke the visa before the case went to court, in the case that bail was
granted.
Following Andrews’ criticism of irregularities discovered in the CV
of an Indian doctor working on the Gold Coast, various media
organisations carried reports disputing Andrews’ claim on parliamentary
and ministerial websites to have co-authored three books, having
contributed only a chapter to each. Andrews argued in his own defence that:
“In common, everyday parlance, as one of the authors (of a
chapter) I presumed you called yourself a co-author – that’s all I’ve
simply done. I wasn’t aware, to be frank, of some publishing convention
that someone’s referred to (that suggests otherwise). If that offends
people’s sensibilities well so be it, basically.”
Andrews’ 2007 decision to cut Australia’s refugee intake from African
nations was branded by some critics as “racist”, and pulling out the
race card before the 2007 Australian Federal election. Andrews defended
the decision, saying:
“Some groups don’t seem to be settling and adjusting into the
Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope.” Andrews accused
Sudanese refugees of fighting in bars and congregating in parks to drink
alcoholic beverages, but did not provide statistics to back up his
claims.
In 2009, Kevin Andrews declared his candidacy against Malcolm
Turnbull in a vote for a leadership spill, in opposition to Turnbull’s
support for the government’s emissions trading scheme. He had declared
himself a climate change sceptic, saying that ‘the jury is still out’ on
human contributions to global warming. The party room however voted
down having a leadership spill 41 votes to 35 and the Andrews challenge
did not eventuate. After continued leadership speculation, a second
Party Room meeting was held, at which point the leadership was declared
vacant. Tony Abbott, Joe Hockey and Malcolm Turnbull all stood for the
leadership, and Tony Abbott was ultimately successful. Following his
election as Leader, Abbott promoted Andrews to the Shadow Cabinet as
Minister for Families, Housing and Human Services.
A member of the Catholic Pontifical Council for the Laity, Andrews is
an Adjunct Lecturer in Politics and in Marriage Education in the John
Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family in Melbourne.
Andrews is an advisor to the Board of Life Decisions International
(LDI), a (non-denominational) religious pro-life group that is primarily
concerned with opposing the pro-choice Planned Parenthood organisation.
LDI campaigns for chastity, boycotts corporations and names individual
celebrities who support abortion, euthanasia, or embryonic stem cell
experimentation or who, in their opinion, support sexual promiscuity.
These include GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson and Johnson, Time Warner and
Disney.
Andrews made a speech to the Endeavour Forum on 9 April 2003, a group
focusing on women’s issues, opposing abortion, equal opportunity and
affirmative action.
He has also spoken at the Family Council of Victoria, an organisation
which regards homosexuality as the manifestation of a psychiatric
disorder. The Family Council of Victoria also opposes sex-education and
anti-homophobia policies in public schools, which it claims is
“pro-homosexual indoctrination” of students.
In 2011, as a Liberal Shadow Cabinet frontbencher Andrews published a
critique of the Greens policy agenda for Quadrant Magazine in which he wrote that the Australian Greens’ “objective
involves a radical transformation of the culture that underpins Western
civilisation” and that their agenda would threaten the
“Judeo-Christian/Enlightenment synthesis that upholds the individual” as
well as “the economic system that has resulted in the creation of
wealth and prosperity for the most people in human history.”
In December 2013, as Social Services Minister, Andrews introduced to
the House of Representatives a bill repealing almost all of the gambling
harm-minimisation measures passed by the Gillard Labor government in
November 2012.
“This is a straight capitulation to the power of the pokies lobby,” says Tim Costello, chair of the Australian Churches’ Gambling Taskforce.
When Australia is recognised as having perhaps the worst gambling
problem in the world, with 41 per cent of poker machine revenue coming
from problem gamblers, one must wonder about Andrew’s motivation. Could
it have something to do with the sudden upsurge in gambling-industry
donations to Australia’s major parties, which coincided with a deal
between independent MP Andrew Wilkie and then-Prime Minister Julia
Gillard?
Fittingly, Andrews’ amendment will also change the name of the law
passed in 2012 — from the National Gambling Reform Act, to the National
Gambling Measures Act. For now, meaningful gambling reform is quite
literally off parliament’s books.
Andrews is a member of the Credlin-led decision-making Star Chamber
which includes federal Liberal Party director Brian Loughnane – Ms
Credlin’s husband – along with John Howard’s former chief of staff, Tony
Nutt, and minister Michael Ronaldson.
He also has his gun sights set on the ABC. Speaking at Canberra
airport on his way to a cabinet meeting, the Social Services Minister
said that in a robust democracy, the media should be scrutinised as much
as anybody else. ”I think the ABC should be open to constructive
criticism about its performance as it would be about the performance of
other people and other institutions in Australia,” he said. ”What goes around comes around.”
We then hear from our Social Services minister that the nation’s
welfare system is “unsustainable” and large, urgent changes must be made
to the disability pension and the general unemployment benefit.
He said the government was reviewing all welfare rules to see what
could be done to decrease the number of unemployed on the dole,
including the possibility of eliminating the ability of those on welfare
to refuse to take a job if it was more than 90 minutes from their home
and keep their income support payments.
Mr Andrews has already revealed the government is looking at changes
that would see more people under the age of 40 on the DSP checked to see
whether they could work and temporary payments for potentially
impermanent conditions to prevent the number of those in the system from
ballooning to one million.
Under Mr Andrews’ mooted change, disability pensioners who were
assessed by their family doctors – before Labor tightened the system in
2011 – would be re-examined by medical experts at the Department of
Human Services.
The minister is also considering giving a fixed higher payment for
the most disabled pensioners, with lower payments for people with less
restrictive disabilities, who might be able to work part time.
Disability Discrimination Commissioner Graeme Innes said the Abbott government was “punishing some of the most vulnerable people in society” by tightening checks on the disability pension.
Regarding the minister’s idea to reassess recipients, Mr Innes said:
“To effectively move the test back a few years, it just seems a cruel
way of penalising people who’ve been in receipt of a benefit.
Introducing a quarterly or six-monthly check is just adding more
complexity both for the Centrelink system and for people with
disabilities,” he said.
Andrews is pushing the idea that pensioners suffering “episodic”
illnesses such as depression should be given monthly or quarterly
medical certificates rather than getting two-year “set and forget”
pensions. This idea, he said, was particularly important given there
were now more disability pensioners suffering from psychological
conditions than suffering musculoskeletal problems.
Australian Council of Social Service chief executive Cassandra Goldie
said she would support any measures by the government to “invest” in
disability pensioners to help them return to the workforce.
But she was concerned that subjecting disability pensioners to more
regular assessments could end up “exacerbating their mental health
condition”.
“We don’t have a welfare crisis in this area, we have a jobs crisis,” Dr Goldie said. “We all want to work on decent reforms which will improve people’s pathways back to being well and getting paid work.”
Despite the financial crisis that apparently makes it necessary for
us to send people suffering from depression ‘down pit’, Mr Andrews was
able to find $20 million for marriage guidance counselling vouchers.
This of course has nothing to do with the fact that he and his wife
are/were involved in the marriage counselling business.
I have tried to remain factual in this snapshot biography of our
Social Services Minister but hells, bells and cockle shells, it would be
hard to find someone less suitable for the job.
No comments:
Post a Comment