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The People’s Democratic Republic of Victoria
Greg Byrne
Victoria's recent abortion bill is the most draconian in history with the possible exception of China's compulsory-abortion-after-one-child policy. It is worse than the Roe v Wade decision in the US which was a Supreme Court judgement rather than a law change. The Victorian law obliges doctors to refer patients to a second doctor for an abortion even if the original doctor had a conscientious objection to abortion and wanted nothing to do with abortion.
Officially this calls for a complaint to be made to the Medical Practitioner's Board to discipline the doctor for failing to obey this law but there is evidence of a trend to simply preventing some doctors from using hospitals on the basis that if you are not going to provide all services then we don't want you in this hospital. This kind of pressure can be hard to prove and it avoids the danger of a confrontation between pro-life doctors and the medical authorities so it’s a sort of Kangaroo Court in which the accused has no rights.
The pro-life movement is a awaiting a test case which it will fight on the basis that the abortion law is in conflict with more basic laws guaranteeing human rights. However if hospital managers are going to enforce this law via the back door then this would be hard to fight. It will be like a "gentleman’s agreement" that some doctors are not welcome in maternity hospitals and need not apply.
The upshot will be that it will put the pro-life doctors in an impossible situation and many will have to go interstate or overseas. The feminists would love this because it means that if you are not going to provide abortions then you don’t practice medicine in Victoria. This draconian law is just one of many draconian laws currently in force. Others are in fields like rental accommodation, environment, industrial relations and so on.
One would have to say that this is an alarming trend and is more in character with a dictatorship than a democracy. Even a dictatorship tends to avoid legislation which might cause the peasants to rise up against their rulers, and dictators don’t go out of its way to make life impossible for innocent people like pro-life doctors.
This state government has shown the same tendency to kow-tow to fanaticism on abortion as it has with reducing bushfire fuel. It has ignored common sense to maintain relations with extreme feminists just as it has ignored common sense to maintain good relations with extreme environmentalists. In addition to this there could be more oppressive legislation on the way via the Equal Opportunity Commission of Victoria.
A new inquiry seeks to get power to initiate an investigation in the absence of any complaints, seize documents and compel someone to answer questions. It would further ask the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal to force people to comply with its policies.
Another review from the Department of Justice now referred to the Scrutiny of Acts and Regulations Committee is examining whether to abolish the exceptions and exemptions of the Victorian Equal Opportunity Commission. These could involve forcing private schools to employ a homosexual as teacher or other position on charge of children. Another proposed change involves forcing private schools to accept any child whether or not the parents subscribe to the particular religious views of the school or not.
Even the most moderate anti-discrimination laws involve forcing private entities to accept standards that violate their beliefs or wishes in particular matters. There used to be a theory that private business can do as they like subject to market forces and that people who were aggrieved could find a solution somewhere else in the market.
But anti-discrimination is but one area of extremist legislation. All labour market regulation is extreme in that it forbids ordinary people accepting a job below “award rates and conditions”. This has caused a massive increase in expenditure on social security benefits for people who are perfectly capable of working and willing to work. This is a major factor in forcing mothers into paid employment. Without these draconian laws most welfare beneficiaries would find work quickly and not claim welfare because they would get a job straight away.
Unless Victorians (and Australians) are prepared to take a stand on these matters they will see their democratic system of government gradually evolve into a police state. Already some wags are calling Victoria "The Peoples Democratic Republic of Victoria".
BrookesNews.Com
Monday 23 February 2009