Liberal Politics - The Christian Right?

The arrest and charging of Milton Orkopoulous is a good thing and shows that no matter the political power a man may wield he is not above the law and that in fact it is even a greater justice that he has a longer way to fall than the common man.  May he rot in hell.

However, the public uproar that this seems to be some fault of Premier Morris Iemma is sad.  The Liberal Party, the long standing bastion of moral purity (never mind their previous leader was a philanderer) have basically accused Iemma of hiding Orkopolous.  That the Labor Party condone such horrendous acts.  That was shouted down in Parliament and Iemma has been very firm in disposing Orkopolous from not just his front bench, but from politics despite the presumptive right that a person is innocent until proven guilty.

Then yesterday the Liberals took it up a notch saying that there “was another” minister under investigation for similar heinous acts and that Iemma should come clean.  Basically a direct attack that Iemma is hiding pedophiles in the Parliament!  This is dirty politics at its worst and I agree with Iemma that Liberal opposition “leader’ Peter Debnam should resign.  In fact if I was Iemma, I’d take action against Debnam for slander put he’d probably get away with it on account of “parliamentary privilege”.

With all this going on yesterday, I saw an interesting story on Dateline last night that was about the almost cultish Christian group “The Exclusive Brethren” have now moved into politics and have been attacking left wing political parties in New Zealand, Australia and the US.  There reason?  Well they believe that they are the chosen ones to ascend into Heaven at the end of the world (they call it The Rapture) and that they believe that the foreign policies (read war) of John Howard and George Bush are bringing the world closer to that point.  Well I agree with them on that – George Bush has probably come closer to blowing up the world than any other US President and Howard is his lapdog, but the point is that they are infiltrating the right wing parties and funding smear campaigns and running a political agenda that is based on fear and out right lies.

In New Zealand, they put out stories that the Prime Ministers husband was homosexual and that the NZ Green Party (a major player there) was morally corrupt,  In Australia, both John Howard and Peter Costello admitted to having meetings with The Brethren and this has been converted into direct exemptions for the Brethren for their companies in the new Industrial Relations laws.  There it is in black and white in the new IR Laws that there is a broad ranging exemption for “companies and subsidiaries owned and / or managed by the Exclusive Brethren”.  Why does this group get direct mention in national laws?  How far has the Howard government been corrupted / influenced by The Brethren?  Who are these crack pots?  When their ultimate desire based on their religious beliefs is for the world to end so that they can ascend into heaven, then isn’t it a tad dangerous that our Federal and State Liberal parties are being pumped information on the sexual preferences of opposition members and then having their say in the running of the country?

This is scary stuff…