samvara

Gillard labels Abbott a misogynist

Julia Gillard has used a call by Tony Abbott for the Government to remove Peter Slipper as Speaker to attack the Opposition Leader for hypocrisy, labelling him a misogynist.

This is an opportunity to celebrate the history, culture and achievements of Aboriginal and Islander people (NAIDOC stands for the National Aboriginal and Islander Day Observance Committee).

This year I learned about the Swan and Canning Iconic River Trails Project which is collecting knowledge of the rivers to share and preserve both culture and access, attended some traditional dances, and ate kangaroo at a BBQ organised by my workplace.

Was all set on Friday night to go to bed at my usually early time when cricketk called to discuss driving arrangements with ascetic_hedony and it turned out we were going out visiting instead. Fear the car that contains T1 and the rest of us - we arrived at sarren's singing extracts from Cats having come to this via Les Mis, Buffy and our much maligned (for good reasons) National Anthem.

Why couldn't we have a decent national song? Something enthusiastic and, well, martial because I want to be French right now and sing La Marseillaise instead of Advance Australia Fair which is a) Awful and b) Embarrassing. Worse, the extremely unPC version I happen to know that I thought of as the dodgy 3rd verse turns out to be the 2nd verse of the 1942 version. It was re-written in 2002 to remove references to all sorts of unsavory things like Men! Sons! Britain! and Thumping People!

Pining for Waltzing Matilda