Daniel Mathews

Last week, two teams of scientists reported their findings on the West Antarctic ice sheet. Climate change has now melted this sector of Antarctica — comprising a tenth of the Antarctic ice mass — so far that it appears the melting has become irreversible. When fully melted — whether in the next century, or a few more — global sea level will rise over 3 metres, redrawing the coastline of the entire earth.
Over the previous few months, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has released the various volumes of its Fifth Assessment Report. Its findings were equally alarming, covering every aspect of the climate, its expected trajectory, impacts, and what can be done to avert the crisis.
We cannot now avert the crisis; permanent environmental and ecological crisis is our new status quo. This is not even to mention economic, psychological or moral crises.
Low-lying islands have been abandoned. Heat records fall in cascades like the meltwaters of ice sheets.
Rational presentation of the alarming facts has so far failed; political solutions through regular channels have failed; diplomatic negotiation of an international agreement has failed. None of these approaches show any signs of ceasing to fail in the near future.
Our collective failure so far is world-historic and monumental.
The mad rush of industrialisation, driven by the engine of capitalism, has dug up the fossilised and liquefied remains of animals and plants long past. We have feasted upon the fires of three thousand million years of our own evolutionary heritage, burning their remains to power our own development — and ending in a treadmill of acquisition, consumption, inequality, and futility. We have burned so much of this thousands-millions-years heritage that these paleontological remains now float in the atmosphere, tipping its composition so far as to affect the whole planet’s energy balance.
It is a sacrifice of such epic tragedy as the ancients could never have dreamed; we offer these charred remains on an intercontinental, world-destroying scale to placate the monstrous appetite of capitalism. This brutal monster knows only how to run faster and bigger and it is gobbling up the entire world. If it so much as slows, we call it recession, and it sends us wholesale to poverty. Our ancestors offered irrational sacrifices to placate forces they did not understand. We fully understand the irrationality, but offer the sacrifice of all our ancestors anyway, vaporised and liquefied — and fully aware that their vaporised remains carry an infrared absorption spectrum which will choke us.
The earth has shifted its average temperature by a few degrees, and will shift for a few more. How many more is in the balance. But the climate system itself has a great deal of inertia: what has already been done will affect us for generations to come.
The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son is not just brimstone fear-theology: it is also a statement about the inertia of the climate, a corollary of theorems on differential equations. The sins of the fathers, the climate forcings of all previous generations, will be visited upon the sons, and on down to the third and fourth generation; so says the book of functional analysis.
Some things cannot be changed by human will: the laws of chemistry, blackbody radiation, and photon scattering, to name a few. But some things can be changed by human will: foremost among these, our own human activities. There is no doubt that humanity, in its present state of knowledge and technology, has the technical capacity to stop burning carbon, and switch to renewable energy sources, in a sufficient time frame to avert disaster.
Australia is an island continent occupying a small corner of this troubled planet. It is geographically large, demographically small, highly educated, relatively socially progressive, bathed in sunlight, hot, dry, and one of the wealthiest places ever to have existed. If ever there were a place with the means, motive and opportunity to take the actions necessary to stop burning carbon, it is Australia in 2014.
This week, the government of this island continent laid down its plans and priorities for the future. Its announcements were not mere rhetoric. A budget is not aspirational: it concretely apportions money and resources, materially allocates resources, appropriates public funds for its projects. There is a mythology that it expresses the collective will of the population.
Amidst irreversibly melting ice sheets, tumbling heat records, and ever-more-frequent extreme weather, the government of this wide brown sunburnt land, rich beyond the imagination of any previous society, chose to —
— repeal a very modest tax on carbon emissions, and disestablish the agency devoted to renewable energy.
Nothing more need be said.
But more should be said, and the litany is extensive.
One could — and should — go on at length about the cuts to universities, fee deregulation, and the end to the progressive principle of the HECS/HELP student loan scheme.
One could — and should — go on at length about the end to universal health care. About how a visit to the doctor, previously technically free, is now no longer, violating a fundamental social moral principle and deterring the poor from obtaining healthcare.
One could — and should — go on at length about the cuts to pensions, meaning further deprivation for some of the most vulnerable inhabitants of this land.
One could — and should — go on at length about the cuts to unemployment benefits, meaning further deprivation for another group of the most vulnerable inhabitants of this land.
One could — and should — go on at length about the cuts to legal aid, a nasty measure that makes a miniscule difference to the budget yet ensures that the most vulnerable suffer maximally.
One could — and should — go on about the removal of funding for indigenous affairs, an equally petty yet even nastier measure, an exquisite further humiliation after centuries of dispossession and violence aimed at the rightful owners of this land.
One could go on at length about these or many other outrages in this budget.
But in order to see the complete category error of this budget — the radical mismatch between physical reality and action taken — it is sufficient to consider the impending climate catastrophe, and the response to it: not a reluctance to act, not even total inaction, but a deliberate and systematic attack upon the tepid actions previously taken. It is full throttle in reverse; a categorical nihilism as to the future.
Moreover, unlike various other budget measures, this did not entail any broken promise or lie. The budget’s radical climate nihilism was one that was entirely premeditated and honest.
Having seen the watered-down carbon tax enacted by the Labor party, and its rapid destruction by the Liberal party, the possibilities for the necessary climate action to occur through mainstream electoral politics are exhausted — and there are many for whom it never seemed a viable option in the first place.
There remains one social variable providing us with a chance: resistance. The variable of political resistance is the crucial independent varaible — and it is the one over which people can have the greatest effect. Without the means, the capacity, and the will to resist the radical disconnect between our permanent climate crisis, and ongoing economic and governmental activity, we accelerate towards collapse. And so we must resist. We must restore sanity.
There was a hashtag on twitter lampooning the budget with Abbott-style three word slogans, #ThreeWordBudget. But this budget commits us to non-renewable energy, fossil fuels, and an acceleration of climate disasters.
At this rate we will need at least two more planets. This is a Three World Budget.
But we only have one.
So resist and fight for it!

On October 12, clashing demonstrations in the Melbourne CBD brought reproductive rights back into the Australian spotlight. Anti-abortion politicians and activists have gone on the attack, on the streets and in Parliament.
The recent attention comes on the fifth anniversary of the decriminalisation of abortion in Victoria, which produced the most progressive abortion laws in Australia — among the most progressive in the southern hemisphere. This reform has provided a target for the anti-abortion movement in Australia, and their aim has sharpened on this fifth anniversary.
But, as in the US, the efforts of anti-abortion activists and lawmakers have largely not been to attack the law directly, but rather to chip away at it indirectly. They have claimed violations of human rights have occurred — but not those of unborn foetuses, and certainly not those of pregnant women in difficult and vulnerable positions. Rather they claim that the human rights of doctors have been violated.
This campaign, and its claims, deserve scrutiny. There have been some crucial omissions, which must be remedied. I can assist in remedying some of these omissions, from my own unfortunate personal experience.
In general, I think it is usually more important to understand the situation in society at large, the issues at stake, the political forces at play, and their social consequences, than it is to focus on any particular individuals. But sometimes you have to name names.
* * *
First, some background. I must say something about Victorian abortion law, and how it affects doctors.
Before 2008, abortion was a crime in Victoria. Although courts had carved out loopholes and prosecutions had become rare, a woman seeking to terminate a pregnancy potentially risked criminal sanctions.The reform of 2008 was the culmination of decades of efforts by doctors, lawyers, activists and citizens. Perhaps the most prominent figure in this long journey was Bertram Wainer, the campaigning physician who stared down slander, death threats, shootings, and arson from anti-abortion fanatics and corrupt police for establishing Australia’s first public abortion clinic in 1972. But Bertram and his wife Jo were part of a broad movement of women and men who struggled over four decades, until the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act of 2008 brought the law into line with community expectations and long-standing practice.
Now, one might think that conferring a right to abortion on women might confer a corresponding obligation on doctors to perform one. But the reform of 2008 did not do so — except in emergency situations, where a woman’s survival is at stake.
Under section 8 of the Act, in a non-emergency situation, if a doctor has a religious or conscientious objection to abortion, the law does not compel them to perform an abortion. In fact, such a doctor doesn’t even have to advise, or authorise, or supervise an abortion.
The law only asks one thing of that doctor: if a woman comes to that doctor seeking advice on an abortion, the doctor must refer her to another doctor who can help her.
The law thus balances rights of women, on the one hand — rights to autonomous control of their own bodies, self-determination of their own lives, freedom of conscience, and religion — with the rights of doctors to freedom of conscience and religion, on the other.
Indeed, a doctor who refused to perform the minimal task of referral — to assist a woman who has come to them seeking advice about abortion — may well be seen as callous and inattentive to the needs of their patient. Not to mention that such behaviour undermines the ability of a woman to effectively invoke her rights to control her own body — her judgment is overridden by the doctor’s veto.
When a patient sees a doctor, the doctor is not supposed to judge the patient’s moral, religious or political beliefs. The doctor is there to help and care for the patient, respecting the patient’s autonomy and agency; certainly not allowing the doctor’s own moral judgments of their patient to affect treatment. If a Jehovah’s Witness refuses a blood transfusion because of a religious belief, the doctor may find the refusal unfounded, ignorant, even stupid; but the patient’s own judgment must prevail.
This position is reflected in the Australian Medical Association’s own code of ethics. According to the profession’s own rules, a doctor must treat their patient “with compassion and respect”, treat health care “as a collaboration”, “refrain from denying treatment… because of a judgement based on discrimination”, and when “a personal moral judgement or religious belief alone prevents you from recommending some form of therapy, inform your patient so that they may seek care elsewhere”. The Medical Board of Australia’s Code of Conduct, likewise requires doctors to understand “that each patient is unique”, and to work “in partnership with their patients”, “taking into account… the patient’s views”, and “recognising and respecting patients’ rights to make their own decisions”. Doctors must be “aware of [their] right to not provide or directly participate in treatments to which [they] conscientiously object”, but must not use an “objection to impede access to treatments that are legal”, in particular “not allowing… moral or religious views to deny patients access to medical care”.
All the Victorian law adds to this, in the case of non-emergency abortion, is to inform the patient of another doctor elsewhere, who can provide the care the patient seeks. Given the history of backyard abortions, and the shame and stigma that can be attached to the procedure, this extra requirement is not exactly an onerous one. It is very far from participation in the procedure — and without it the ability of women to realise their right to an abortion would be diminished.
Indeed, a doctor can easily avoid any conflict of interest. They can simply notify patients of any objection in advance, through a notice in the waiting room or on their website. The Australian Medical Association has even provided templates for this purpose.
Nonetheless, the argument has been made that something here infringes on a doctor’s freedom of conscience or religion. That is the argument anti-abortion activists have chosen to make in recent times.
That is the argument that one such doctor made to me — referring women for abortions violates his freedom of conscience. Because women who have abortions deserve to die.
You read that right. Women who have abortions deserve to die. And more besides.
And these were not the views of a random fanatic. I would rather not dwell on the views of one individual, but he is an exemplar of this movement. Indeed, he is one of its new martyrs.
* * *
It has been quite a coordinated campaign. The group Doctors Conscience (despite a somewhat underprepared website) has managed to enlist support from high-profile politicians. They feature supportive quotes from Liberal Premier Napthine and Victorian Labor Deputy Leader John Merlino. They have circulated a new petition, apparently detailing the injustices suffered by two innocent conscientious doctors. State Labor MP Christine Campbell spoke in the Victorian Parliament on October 17, arguing that the Abortion Reform act violates the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities. A keynote “Freedom of Conscience” Dinner was held on October 19. The campaign is evidently ongoing.
This campaign has highlighted the plights of two doctors, whose freedoms they allege have been violated.
One of these doctors is Mark Hobart, who has received the more publicity of the two. He claims to have been asked to perform a sex-selective abortion, which was a newsworthy story — although he failed to disclose his political affiliations; he had previously run for election as a candidate of the staunchly anti-abortion Democratic Labor Party. As it turns out, he believes abortion is “a mortal sin” and anyone assisting in it “will go to hell”.
But it is the other case I want to focus on — that of Jereth Kok. The reason is because I have direct personal experience of that case, and existing discussions of his case have missed some rather crucial details.
Dr Eamonn Mathieson, speaking at the Park Hyatt at the Doctors Conscience dinner, described him as:

a GP from Melbourne’s eastern suburbs… [who] was disciplined and threatened by AHPRA (the National Medical Board) when he was reported to them by another doctor for expressing his personal views on abortion and Section 8 in a hypothetical and private discussion on a social media site.

Kok features (anonymously) in the Doctors Conscience petition in similar terms. Christine Campbell in the Victorian Parliament made Kok’s case (calling him “Dr K”) the focus of her speech:

Dr K… is a general practitioner who practises in two busy suburban practices in Melbourne…
[I]n 2011 Dr K participated in an online conversation about abortion on the social media site Facebook during which he stated that he was opposed to it and did not refer patients. There were four or five other participants in the conversation. A few weeks later Dr K received a letter from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency which stated that the medical board was investigating him over his professional conduct after he was reported by one of the other Facebook correspondents.

According to these accounts, a hypothetical, intellectual, private discussion between friends online — in which Kok just honestly stated his conscience — was turned into a police state horror story when a busybody reported him to the authorities and terrifying interrogation ensued.
There are some notable omissions from these accounts, however.
I know this, because I was one of the participants in the conversation.
So let me provide some further details. I also include the full text of the conversation as an appendix, so that you can make your own judgment.
* * *
It should by now be clear that this conversation was not private in any meaningful sense of the word — claims to the contrary are inaccurate. I do not know Kok; I am certainly not his private confidant. If I could see and indeed participate in this conversation, so could many other strangers.
The conversation was instigated by a post made by a third party. The post was an anti-abortion fable, arguing that an abortion is equivalent to the murder of an almost-year-old baby. Unsurprisingly, it provoked several strongly worded comments. It was only after several comments that Kok joined in with a personal anecdote.

I get a request for abortion referral about once every 3 or 4 months. I tell the woman politely that it is against my moral principles to advise on this issue, and they need to find someone else to help them. (In a few instances I have attempted to talk them out of it.) Yes, I’m breaking Victoria’s new abortion laws, but I don’t give a stuff — I am not going to soil my conscience by being complicit in the slaughter of children.

(Emphasis added.) Needless to say, Kok did not explain why he couldn’t just use the AMA template to avoid the problem. But he went on. One interlocutor had suggested an alternative ending to the fable, where the woman refused an abortion ended up dying from peritonitis from a back alley abortion. His response:

Yep. And that’s exactly what she deserved for trying to kill her own child.
I have a 3 month old baby. If someone snuck into his room with a knife and tried to kill him, but accidentally slipped over and stabbed themselves through the heart, that would be exactly what they deserve.
If a man attacked my wife with a gun, but in the process the gun misfired and blew his head off, that would be his just deserts.
“He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword” – Jesus Christ, Matthew 26:52

I hadn’t quite been expecting a judgment of a mandatory death penalty on women seeking abortions, let alone one imposed by scripture. (Actually, Matthew 26:52, in context, is about nonviolence: Jesus is telling his followers to put away their swords. Such a merciful reading of the gospel apparently didn’t appeal.) But I am, after all, a mathematician, and interested in boundary cases and exploring pathological arguments. So I wondered, facetiously, how far his death penalty should extend. After all, the Bible can be rather vicious in its punishments.

Well, I can understand why women having abortions deserve to die. … fathers of unborn children would deserve to die too, if they were complicit in it…

I did not quite expect the cold-bloodedness I got in response.

Don’t see anything to object to there! 🙂
…
It’s a shame that more men don’t die from complications of abortion. It disappoints me that men can sire children, decide to kill them, and that they do not need to risk their neck in the process. Life is not fair.

Several people, including myself, took umbrage to Kok’s comments. Several argued with him at some length. In the course of such argument one interlocutor suggested that

Jereth may wish to delete his comment bragging about illegal or unprofessional practice, in writing, in a semi-public space.

In response, Kok doubled down:.

rest assured that if ever I need to speak to the AHPRA about this matter, I will have the backing of the AMA’s code of ethics, over 200 other Victorian doctors who are conscientious objectors, and the entire Catholic health system. It would be a great opportunity to bring to light the utter disgracefulness of the current Victorian law.
…
if you have courage of your convictions… why don’t you just report me to the APHRA [sic] yourself? Or are you afraid that you will be laughed out of the room, down the hallway, and out the front door?
…
See you at the hearing.

Evidently such a report to AHPRA was made (not by me).
And thus an anti-abortion martyr was born.
* * *
To be clear: I think Kok has every right to say that he thinks women who have abortions, and their partners, deserve to die, and would oppose any criminal sanction or legal penalty for him expressing that opinion. And nobody has questioned his right to do so. (If he proceeded to act and effect this “deserved” outcome, of course, it would be premeditated murder.) But whether such conduct is appropriate for a self-identified medical doctor, speaking in his own name to strangers, is another question entirely. Admissions of routinely breaking the law are, of course, entirely different again.
Medical practitioners are entrusted with great responsibilities, and held in very high esteem by the public. To be a medical doctor is a privilege which must be earned and retained. Medical practitioners must hold their colleagues to strict standards, if the public is to retain confidence in them.
Doctors are the people we turn to when we are weak, sick, and infirm. In my view, they should care for patients, not express views to strangers about how they and those they love deserve to die, while boasting about their routine illegal behaviour.
* * *
The full story of Kok’s case is thus rather different from the “hypothetical and private discussion” referred to by Dr Mathieson, or the mere “conversation about abortion… during which he stated that he was opposed to it and did not refer patients”, as Christine Campbell put it. It is not hypothetical, but involves concrete admissions of illegality. Not private, but open to me and people like me. Rather more than a conscientious statement of opposition to abortion.
Kok does not just refuse to help women regarding abortions. By his own account he routinely violates the law, every 3-4 months, and “doesn’t give a stuff”. By his own account he believes that women who have abortions deserve to die. By his own account he believes that the partners of women who have abortions also deserve to die — and it is unfair that they don’t. He quotes the Bible as his authority.
Kok restates his beliefs repeatedly, in a semi-public space, to strangers — strangers who warn him about his behaviour while he is doing it. He goads these strangers to report him to AHPRA, boasting of how he would win decisively and use the case for political influence.
As it turns out, he did not win his case. An AHPRA Panel found him to have engaged in unprofessional conduct. The Panel gave him a caution — the lightest slap on the wrist possible.
Nonetheless, evidently he has carried through on his boast to use the case for political gain, as the efforts of Christine Campbell and Doctors Conscience attest. He also published an account in a trade publication, the Australian Doctor. He has certainly not retreated into private life.
Kok has attempted to remain anonymous — a far cry from his original bravado. But he certainly had no reasonable expectation of privacy talking in his own name to a stranger like me. Indeed, in attempting to spin his story — or a version denuded of almost all relevant detail — for political gain, in the Victorian Parliament no less, Kok cannot expect that the full story will not come out. He cannot expect to remain anonymous. If he wants his case to be used to influence public debate, then the public ought to be informed about all the relevant details of the case.
I am pro-choice, and I oppose the anti-abortion lobby. But I especially oppose the anti-abortion lobby making their case in a dishonest way. Distorting Kok’s story, ignoring all the details which explain his adverse AHPRA finding, is a pathetic attempt at spin.
So far as I know, Kok continues to hold himself out as a suburban GP.
And as I said at the outset, while I have focused on an individual here, I think it is more important to think about the broader implications. If this case is the strongest one that the anti-abortion lobby can find, then I think the prospects for reproductive rights in Australia are rather bright.
* * *
FULL TEXT OF CONVERSATION:
Note that there are many different people involved. I have removed identifying details of all involved except Kok and myself; I have replaced names with [A], [B], etc.
All emphasis in the below is mine. Since it is a long text, I have emphasised the parts I think are most relevant.
The initial post by [A] was a story, which follows.
* * *
Inspire Your Living
A worried woman went to her gynecologist and said: ‘Doctor, I have a serious problem and desperately need your help! My baby is not even 1 year old and I’m pregnant again. I don’t want kids so close together. So the doctor said: ‘Ok and what do you want me to do?’ She said: ‘I want you to end my pregnancy, and I’m counting on your help with this.’ The doctor thought for a little, and after some silence he said to the lady: ‘I think I have a better solution for your problem. It’s less dangerous for you too.’ She smiled, thinking that the doctor was going to accept her request. Then he continued: ‘You see, in order for you not to have to take care 2 babies at the same time, let’s kill the one in your arms. This way, you could rest some before the other one is born. If we’re going to kill one of them, it doesn’t matter which one it is. There would be no risk for your body if you chose the one in your arms. The lady was horrified and said: ‘No doctor! How terrible! It’s a crime to kill a child! ‘I agree’, the doctor replied. ‘But you seemed to be OK with it, so I thought maybe that was the best solution.’ The doctor smiled, realizing that he had made his point. He convinced the mom that there is no difference in killing a child that’s already been born and one that’s still in the womb. The crime is the same! If you agree, please SHARE. Together we can help save precious lives! “Love says I sacrifice myself for the good of the other person. Abortion says I sacrifice the other person for the good of myself..
[Comments follow.]
[B]: At the risk of starting a flame war: “dislike”.
[C]: That’s only 1 side of the story, I think I disagree
[D]: So the woman left the pompous doctor who felt all self-righteous and went to the back alley stuck some knitting needles and a coathanger up there to do it herself and gave herself peritonitis and died.
[Daniel Mathews]: I think there is a happier ending actually. The patient complained about the pompous doctor, not about the doctor was pompous or because of their personal views, but for the doctor not respecting the patient’s values and wishes, and not providing the patient access to care consistent with the their values and wishes — a professional ethical obligation. And the doctor was deregistered, the patient found a better doctor (no thanks to the original doctor’s lack of a referral to someone willing to provide care consistent with the patient’s values), and everyone lived happily ever after.
[E]: Sadface for [D]’s comment and thumbs up for Daniel’s.
“there is no difference in killing a child that’s already been born and one that’s still in the womb”
*jaw drop* Are you serious?
[E]: http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/article/2011/10/13/house-passes-hr-358-the-let-women-die-act-of-2011
via XXXXX, whom you may know from XXXXX and XXXXX.
[F]: women should determine laws on women’s health. And if you haven’t walked in everyone’s shoes, there is no right to judge.
[G]: [C] sorry i find this a pretty horrible story too… and “inspire your living”…? my goodness… >_<
[A]: Thanks for your honest opinions guys. I knew this was going to be a provocative post, and we are fortunate that most doctors do not act like this (it is clearly a made up story). But I thought it did make a pertinent point (in a rather shocking way) which is to ask, well, what IS the difference, philosophically and morally speaking, between killing the child in the womb and the one in her arms? It is not at all a clear cut question, particularly for later-term abortions beyond 24 weeks (now legal in Victoria), and it is one which I continue to grapple with, and am yet to find a satisfactory answer to, that sits right with my conscience.
[D]: It doesn’t really matter what sits right with your conscience unless it is a decision about your body. Before abortion was semi legal women still had abortions, they were just exploited in their desperation by backyard abortionists who were not medically trained and heaps of women died. Can’t ban abortions because they will still happen anyway so it is better it is done safely. Because it can’t be banned it has to be a decision each woman makes for herself.
[A]: [D], I agree that my conscience isn’t necessarily relevant to other people making decisions about their bodies (and each person is accountable for their own decisions). Yet I guess most of us thinking members of society will form opinions about things going on based on our own values and notions of what is right and wrong, just and unjust. And if we see something unjust happening (or something that doesn’t sit right with our conscience), I think many people would see it as their responsibility to say something, or point it out. As you are doing, by pointing out the risks of illegal abortion (clearly that is something that your conscience does not like), which is a valid point. So… that’s why I think our consciences do matter, even if we’re not involved in the decision itself directly.
(PS. Though I do believe that most of the drop in death rate occurred due to the advent of the antibiotics, rather than legal abortions; and also that the social pressures for pregnant women out of wedlock are far far less than back in those days…)
[E]: It does sound as apocryphal as the story about aborting Beethoven, and the point it makes is not as convincing to me as it is to you who already believe. I think there is a difference between a child and a foetus, and my moral intuitions, naturally selected for in my ancestors, feel just as ‘right’ to me as yours must to you, ordained by a higher power.
[A]: LOL [E] I reckon our moral intuitions probably come from similar places, i.e. our genetic makeup and our environmental influences. I certainly wouldn’t imply that mine is any more specially ‘ordained’ than yours. Nor does my concern about late-term abortions come from religion – the Bible makes no comment about the statuses of foetuses vs neonates. It’s simply a human concern, knowing what I know about late-term infants, having seen premmies in incubators, seen women give birth etc, and feeling that there doesn’t seem to be much that changes when the baby is born vs a few minutes (or even weeks) prior.
So because of that I think it’s just logical that anyone who abhors infanticide (like they used to do in China when XXXXX was XXXXX, injecting KCl into newborns basically as ‘abortions’ – horrible) should abhor late-term abortion, especially in our Western society where 24-week babies are viable. It is the same baby, whether it’s in the womb, or in an incubator, or in the mum’s arms.
To me that is a perfectly rational argument that doesn’t need any religious thought to back it up. In fact I would be surprised if there were no intelligent, thinking, non-religious people who thought the same way.It is easy to jump onto the bandwagon of the politically correct view of the day – and in our day and age, when individual rights and freedoms are most highly valued, it is an unpopular thing to question anything that may seem to limit someone’s choices. But I don’t believe that the most popular view is necessarily the most correct one – I think each should be judged on its merits, rather than who or how many are supporting them. And I do like to chew on these issues, and in some cases question ‘politically correct’ views… (as you may have already noticed…) But I appreciate all your comments, and for keeping disagreements respectful.
[A]: And I should mention that you may have perfectly rational reasons too for not thinking the same way as me – that’s fine. But at the very least, I wanted to point out that it is POSSIBLE to be a thinking person, and question some aspects of abortion.
[Jereth Kok]: I get a request for abortion referral about once every 3 or 4 months. I tell the woman politely that it is against my moral principles to advise on this issue, and they need to find someone else to help them. (In a few instances I have attempted to talk them out of it.) Yes, I’m breaking Victoria’s new abortion laws, but I don’t give a stuff — I am not going to soil my conscience by being complicit in the slaughter of children.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCe0lG_Z8NA
[Jereth Kok]: “So the woman left the pompous doctor who felt all self-righteous and went to the back alley stuck some knitting needles and a coathanger up there to do it herself and gave herself peritonitis and died.”
Yep. And that’s exactly what she deserved for trying to kill her own child.
I have a 3 month old baby. If someone snuck into his room with a knife and tried to kill him, but accidentally slipped over and stabbed themselves through the heart, that would be exactly what they deserve.
If a man attacked my wife with a gun, but in the process the gun misfired and blew his head off, that would be his just deserts.
“He who lives by the sword shall perish by the sword” – Jesus Christ, Matthew 26:52
[Daniel Mathews]: Well, I can understand why women having abortions deserve to die. But the sins of the father (and, presumably, mother) shall be visited upon the son (and, presumably, the daughter). Right on down to the third and fourth generations. After all, that’s in the bible too, which is the infallible revealed word of god. (True, the bible says the opposite as well, but only twice, while the punishment of the son is supported by four books of the old testament.) So, actually, then, unborn children of women having abortions deserve to die anyway, along with any children they might have had. Better not to have let them been born anyway. Well, they couldn’t have been part of the elect in any case, as revealed by their sin.
I can certainly see why fathers of unborn children would deserve to die too, if they were complicit in it, and letting their partners murder their baby, if the spray of the abortion-shotgun got them. And the MPs who voted for the change in law, they are enablers of murder aren’t they, so there’d be no problem with their death, just like the doctors at the abortion clinics. They all live by the sword, so let them perish too. But what about the vast majority of Australians who support decriminalisation of abortion. I think they deserve to die too, because they let it happen and might well be involved in it one day. And their families, if those families were complicit in abortion, down to the third and fourth generations.
Well, only the elect are going to heaven anyway, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. Let’s just kill them all.
[Jereth Kok]: “I can certainly see why fathers of unborn children would deserve to die too, if they were complicit in it … if the spray of the abortion-shotgun got them. ”
Don’t see anything to object to there! 🙂
[H]: Are these same people who deny the rights of preborn people concerned with animal rights? I’m staggered at the community outrage at how cows are treated; wouldn’t it be nice if unborn children had so many standing up for them?
[Jereth Kok]: @Daniel – It’s a shame that more men don’t die from complications of abortion. It disappoints me that men can sire children, decide to kill them, and that they do not need to risk their neck in the process. Life is not fair. If abortion carried more risks for men, it would make them think twice where to put their penis.
Sorry, but despite your obfuscation you have failed to counter my point: that if someone attacks another human being with the intent to kill, and are accidentally maimed or killed in the act, then poetic justice is done. You have failed to show how there is any qualitative difference between a woman who accidentally dies of blood loss trying to kill her unborn baby, and a man who accidentally falls on his knife trying to kill my 3 month old baby. And try as you may, you won’t be able to, because there IS no difference. The two scenarios are equivalent.
[D] argued: “Can’t ban abortions because they will still happen anyway so it is better it is done safely.” I can show you the fallacy of this by proposing a simple analogy: It is impossible to ban murder. No matter how good the police are, they cannot stop murder from happening. Therefore, better that we allow people to commit murder safely. We should set up “murder clinics” where people can bring their intended victim, tie them up, and with the assistance of a qualified professional executioner administer a lethal dose of anaesthetic. That way no one will accidentally be injured while trying to shoot, stab, drown or asphyxiate their intended victim in a botched “backyard” murder.
[E]: (Somewhat off-topic for this thread, just a general comment:)
For abortion, like premarital sex, drugs and other things where the conservative reflex is to ban it, the evidence favours harm minimisation over zero tolerance. E.g. unwanted pregnancy is an outcome that all sides want to reduce and the evidence shows that available contraception achieves that more effectively than abstinence-only sex education, but sometimes people prefer to think their teenagers aren’t sexually active, than to actually educate and protect them. Just as some communities prefer to think they are taking the high road regarding drugs, never mind that safe injection rooms reduce deadly overdoses or that the ‘war on drugs’ takes lives as well as law enforcement resources that could be better spent elsewhere. There’s a mentality that it’s more important to be seen to do the ‘moral’ thing instead of what actually produces better outcomes. Decriminalising abortion takes away the perverse incentive toward ‘backyard abortions’, and however much one cares about foetuses, one should care at least that much about women.
(Back on-topic next comment)
[E]: I don’t think viable foetuses should be terminated (except where it’s an inevitable side effect of saving the mother’s life). And I’m a big fan of society moving with the times, so legislation should be updated periodically to keep up with changing technology and improved healthcare, e.g. with foetuses becoming viable earlier in gestation. So on this point, we do not disagree. That’s not what this thread is about for me.
The issue that your link spawns is one of inappropriate behaviour in medical practice. How appalling would it be if a surgeon said ‘you have appendicitis but I won’t take out your appendix because you’ve been naturally selected against and it would be wrong for me to get in the way of the evolution of humans to get rid of the appendix’? Absurd example I know, but the point is, we can’t let personal beliefs get in the way of being a good doctor.
[A] and I have respectfully disagreed a lot over the years, and it is because of that, that I still participate in discussions where I already know we have very different opinions. I’m not interested in a flame war, or a definition debate where we all agree that ‘slaughter of children’ is wrong but cannot resolve our differing opinions on what constitutes a child. Jereth may wish to delete his comment bragging about illegal or unprofessional practice, in writing, in a semi-public space.
[Jereth Kok]: I’m not bragging, [E]. I’m simply stating a fact. The story that [A] shared describes a situation that I am regularly in, and I’m telling her how I respond to it. I don’t revel in the fact that I need to ignore the law in order to live and work in a way that is consistent with my personal and religious principles. But I have to sleep at night, and that would be impossible if I made myself complicit in the abominable practice of defenceless children being killed in the womb.
And there is nothing unprofessional about adhering to one’s own conscience. The AMA, which represents my profession, objected to the Victorian law which no longer allows doctors to conscientiously object to providing a referral for abortion. In 5 out of 6 Australian States, doctors have this ability. It is silly to suggest that I’m being unprofessional by acting in a manner that is perfectly legal in 5 other states.
[Jereth Kok]: “How appalling would it be if a surgeon said ‘you have appendicitis but I won’t take out your appendix because you’ve been naturally selected against and it would be wrong for me to get in the way of the evolution of humans to get rid of the appendix’? Absurd example I know, but the point is, we can’t let personal beliefs get in the way of being a good doctor.”
[E], you said it yourself. This is an absurd example which is in no way analogous to a situation where someone presents seeking an abortion. A pregnant woman isn’t, in 99.9% of cases, going to become fatally ill simply by allowing the child within her to grow to term. Nobody is involuntarily killed when an appendix is removed.
With all due respect, you seem to be blissfully naive about the professional and ethical aspects of “being a good doctor”. “Being a good doctor” does not mean acting as a mindless, valueless automaton, simply giving patients whatever they ask for. The practice of medicine does not occur in a moral and relational vacuum. Being a good doctor involves bringing all of one’s training, skill, experience and values to bear on the varied situations one is faced with from day to day. Those values include personal values which, yes, include one’s worldview and religious principles. A doctor who is willing to violate his own deeply held values in the practice of his medicine is not a good doctor; indeed he cannot be a good doctor, because being a good doctor requires both personal integrity and consistency of thought and action.
(Perhaps you would need to actually have worked in this profession for a while to be able to appreciate this.)
Yes, respecting the views and wishes of a patient is part of being a good doctor. But when those wishes run counter to a doctor’s own values, a doctor who caves in is sabotaging his own professional and personal integrity. A good doctor, when faced with this situation, will politely tell the patient that he can no longer be of assistance to them and terminate the relationship. This is what I do when someone asks me to send them for an abortion. I don’t start preaching to them that they are a killer (even though that is what I believe), I simply say that I do not agree with the course of action they are seeking, and so I cannot help them any further. In 99% of cases there is no medical emergency, and the patient has plenty of time to find someone else willing to help them, of which there is no shortage so it would be ridiculous to suggest that a handful of pro-life Christian doctors are blocking women from having abortions.
[Jereth Kok]: By the way, regarding your “off-topic” comment [E], what you state as fact is actually far from it. I’d very much like to see your “evidence” that harm minimisation approaches to drugs and sex education are better for the health of society. Just looking at STDs and unwanted pregnancy, harm minimisation has been a spectacular failure. It has been the philosophy for some 25 years, and never has there been such epidemic rates of STDs (which includes cervical cancers and pre-cancers) and unwanted pregnancy. Were you aware that GPs are currently advised to screen ALL women between age 18 and 25 who walk through the door for chlamydia (an infection that renders women infertile) — even if they just come for a runny nose and a medical certificate? That’s how bad it is. Telling kids to use condoms clearly doesn’t work.
[Jereth Kok]: And finally, just to put to rest any silly ideas still floating around that it is “unprofessional” for a doctor to conscientiously object to helping a patient find her way to an abortion service, please see the following links. I will leave it to those interested to read through to the relevant parts of these articles.
http://www.australiandoctor.com.au/news/26/0c05bd26.asp
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2008-10-02/proposed-abortion-laws-threaten-doctors-rights/528682
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-national/abortion-law-at-odds-with-autonomy-ama-20090725-dwu8.html
http://www.quadrant.org.au/magazine/issue/2011/10/the-greens-threat-to-religious-freedom
[E]: Funny you should mention that, [H]. Unborn children? Even ones already born! I was staggered by how much outrage there was over live cattle export compared to mandatory detention and deportation of human refugees.
Sorry I actually hadn’t read Jereth’s comments preceding my last reply so they weren’t addressing him at all. Now that I have, I think I should bow out of this conversation while I can still keep a civil tongue, because with each comment he incriminates himself further, not just as an unprofessional doctor who should be reported to AHPRA, but as a fanatic of staggering moral monstrosity.
Thank you for the discussion [A]. Hope you and XXXXX are well. =)
[Jereth Kok]: Farewell [E]; I wish you a good life. It’s disappointing that the only responses available to you when confronted with cogent arguments and facts which dismantle your position are either to develope an “uncivil” tongue, or to make some more foolish and uninformed remarks (with an ad hominem attack thrown in) and then duck out of the debate. But this is nothing that I have not experienced many times before when debating people who are “pro-choice”. After all, the “pro-choice” position is riddled with so much logical inconsistency, factual error and outright dishonesty that the only way for a “pro-choicer” to “win” an argument is to run from it.
BTW, rest assured that if ever I need to speak to the AHPRA about this matter, I will have the backing of the AMA’s code of ethics, over 200 other Victorian doctors who are conscientious objectors, and the entire Catholic health system. It would be a great opportunity to bring to light the utter disgracefulness of the current Victorian law.
[Jereth Kok]: P.S. if you have courage of your convictions, [E], rather than just carrying on and posturing here on Facebook, why don’t you just report me to the APHRA yourself? Or are you afraid that you will be laughed out of the room, down the hallway, and out the front door?
Before lodging your complaint with the APHRA about my “unprofessional conduct”, I suggest you first familarise yourself with the following document, particularly sections 1.1 p-r and 3 a-d and 4g
http://ama.com.au/codeofethics
Also, take some time to read through the materials available through Dr. Lachlan Dunjey and Dr. Eamon Mattheison.
http://www.medicinewithmorality.info/
http://www.doctorsconscience.org/index.php
See you at the hearing.
[I]: Jereth please chill out, remember things on the internet are written in ink, not pencil. Right now people reading this might agree with some points you make but still think you’re a doofus for the way you’ve expressed yourself perhaps a little too aggressively. Respect.
[Jereth Kok]: [I] – I stand by everything I have written here, or else I would have deleted or amended it.
If anyone needs to worry about having expressed things in an unsavoury way, it is those who have argued from the pro-abortion side.
“A little too aggressively” — well, that is a subjective judgment to which you are entitled. What we are talking about here is the violent slaughter of 80,000 defenceless young children every year in Australia (20,000 in Victoria) from within their mothers’ own wombs, and medical professionals being forced against their conscience and their own code of ethics to participate in this industry of killing. Please forgive me for getting mildly fired up.

Today I am resigning my position on the National Council of the Wikileaks Party.
There are several reasons for this resignation, detailed below, but they have been simmering for some time. The Wikileaks Party has arguably suffered serious problems from the outset, being pulled in radically different directions from its base and membership, on the one hand, and the figurehead and associates on the other. These contradictions must eventually resolve themselves, and my resignation today is part of that resolution.
The immediate cause of my resignation, however, is the recent fiasco over senate preferences. The preferences submitted to the Electoral Commission caused a catastrophic loss to the party, including a great deal of distress for members and volunteers who I greatly respect. I have given the party time to put out a statement on the matter, and an independent review has already been announced. However it was immediately undermined. In a desperate move, several members of the council attempted to convene an emergency meeting — to no avail. The public, and supporters, deserve to know what has happened. As such, I have written this account myself, alone.
Preferences had been a simmering issue for some time. Views differed within the party, but in order to understand what follows, it is important to note the structure of the party.
Under the party constitution, the National Council of the party is its governing body, ultimately responsible for its actions and overall direction. Its decisions are binding on the party. It has 11 members, including myself — a founding member of Wikileaks — as well as the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and his father John Shipton.
At one end of the spectrum of views within the party, I was of the opinion that we should not do any preference deals at all. We should simply preference the parties in order of our values. We have respect and goodwill across the spectrum. We are a new party, without a record of established electoral enemies, without grudges against us, beginners’ goodwill. We did not project a particularly ideological image and so would not immediately alienate Left or Right. We could plausibly expect relatively high preferences across the spectrum — especially from the Greens, left and libertarian minor parties, and perhaps even other parties too. If we played our cards right we could perhaps pull off an historic result like the Movimento Cinque Stelle in Italy.
And though I saw this strategy as the best one to present a principled position and attract the highest possible primary vote, as well as the best possible preferences from others, I considered also that that even if I were wrong, and we had a higher chance of getting elected by doing preference deals, that we should also consider the long-term prospects of the movement which has sprung up around Wikileaks, and the broad social questions to which the party is committed. The party is committed to many social goals, including transparency, accountability, justice, and self-determination, as well as promoting candidates for electoral office. Moreover, pursuing deals with those who oppose our values would compromise the party and alienate those who have joined a movement that they saw as unique for its integrity and courage — our supporters being highly intelligent, activist and committed.
I could countenance some slight modifications to this pure position. For instance, there is an argument to move otherwise mediocre minor parties higher in order to give new voices a better chance and undermine the two-party monopoly. But the outline of my position was clear and I made it well known to the council. No doubt many saw it as profoundly naive and idealistic. But at least I thought it was useful to have such a voice on the council of an electoral party.
(I should also add that my own philosophy is skeptical of electoral politics per se; but that depending on circumstances it can be effective to seek change inside or outside the system. I thought the Wikileaks party presented an historic, strategic opportunity for an intervention into electoral politics.)
At the other end of the party the view on preferences was essentially a view of playing the game. Hardly an unusual difference of opinion. Entering this arena, we were playing to win, and in order to win we need to make the appropriate deals. We probably don’t have the primary vote to do it alone, and so we need to make deals. Julian and Greg Barns (who is campaign director but not on the National Council) essentially held this view — though I do not pretend to present their views fully; they are perfectly able to present their own opinions themselves. Greg, as part of his role, talked to many parties and proposed to the council several deals, including with fundamentalist and far-right parties.
In between were various shades of idealism and pragmatism, of preferences as a moral statement through to preferences as a matter of technical expertise.
National Council meetings have been held at least weekly for several months. Until last Friday, Julian had attended precisely one meeting. He is extremely busy, of course, and has many important things to do. Helping Ed Snowden is surely more important than attending a council meeting. But still, attending 1 out of the first 13 National Council meetings of the party (all of which he could call in to) is a fairly low participation rate in one’s own party, for a man confined to an embassy equipped with a telephone.
On 6 August, at a National Council meeting, Greg Barns proposed a deal with a group of small parties, organised by Glenn Druery. It is of course his job to talk to other parties and I have no doubt he has worked hard and honestly to do his job throughout. This group, including several far right parties, proposed to deliver 7%-9% of the vote to us if we preferenced them all highly. The National Council rejected it.
At all meetings on preferences, Greg Barns spoke repeatedly of his conversations with Julian, but it seemed to me that much less communication apparently occurred between Julian and the National Council. As such, in my view, a divide started to appear between an insider group, including Julian, John and Greg, and the rest of the National Council.
Julian, John, Greg and others, with various degrees of enthusiasm and qualification, were in favour of concluding preference deals with parties that might not otherwise preference us, such as the Christian right and the Shooters & Fishers. They thought it was the only way to win, and they were prepared to do deals with those parties. They argued, roughly speaking, that the average punter cares nothing about preference deals, the impact on primary vote will be minimal, and only with the extra preferences will we be able to get over the line.
Several on the National Council, including myself, were concerned to maintain the integrity of the party, concerned for the effect on our membership, volunteers and activists of damaging deals, not to mention the compromises we were making ourselves.
At a National Council meeting on 12 August, there was spirited argument between Greg Barns and several members of the National Council regarding a deal with Family First. As part of its decision at that meeting, the National Council requested Greg to provide certain information.
Although Julian had not attended the meeting, after receiving the council’s resolution by email he quickly wrote a long email entitled “NC micromanagement of preferences”, in which he expressed his displeasure with the council in making such requests, and proposed an alternative structure for preference decisions. Negotiations would be done by lead candidates, with no restraints on them, and Julian having a right of veto. He proposed giving the National Council a role in rubber-stamping the results of this process.
Thus, one member of the national council was proposing to grant themselves a right of veto and to reduce it to a rubber stamp. Given the eagerness of some to pursue deals even with the far right, I and several others on the National Council were keen to retain the National Council’s role in these important decisions.
I told the Council that the party could have been set up autocratically, but it was not set up that way. It was set up with a reasonably democratic structure, with a governing council with membership and representation from various sectors supportive of, and related to, Wikileaks. If it could be overridden by the lead candidate when he disagreed, it would be a sham. This received the support of several others on the council, and it thus appeared that the Council would not be reduced to a sham.
On Friday 16 August, the AEC officially announced candidates and parties rapidly negotiated their final deals. At this point the Wikileaks Party had potential deals on the table with Family First, Shooters & Fishers, the Greens, and others. As one might imagine, the National Council, including some candidates, were strongly interested in the outcome of those decisions.
A marathon series of meetings was held through the day, beginning in the morning and running all the way through to the evening. The National Council essentially spent the whole day on the phone. The situation was fluid, with several deals on the table, decisions contingent on others, three states to decide on, and full information not always available.
Nonetheless, most of the council managed to stay on the calls throughout the day. Julian was present at the first meeting but not subsequent ones; John became his proxy. Discussion was occasionally difficult and testy, but votes were held on all questions where there was a difference of opinion. The democratic procedures of the party were followed.
At length, it was decided for NSW to put the Greens above the Shooters & Fishers and the Christian Right — with whom deals had been considered and rejected.
WA was the easy case, because we had a pre-existing arrangement with the Greens senator, Scott Ludlam. They would clearly be ahead of the major parties, and Family First and the Christian Right. This was presented as uncontroversial and little argument was made.
Victoria was the most difficult. There was a vote on a resolution, which was complicated and contingent upon another deal, but roughly the question was whether or not to do a deal with Family First and put them in the top 10 preferenced parties, if we didn’t get a better offer.
The vote went 3 yes, 3 abstain, 5 no. John and Julian (via John as proxy) voted yes.
As further deals with right-wing parties fell through, what emerged as the National Council’s decision was one that I found quite a relief, a result that had seemed barely achievable the day before. In each state, Greens were to be above Labor/Liberal/Nationals, and the far-right were to go low. Small left and libertarian parties were somewhere in between. The council could not practically decide the precise ordering of all parties, and some discretion was left to the candidates and/or campaign teams to establish the details. Nonetheless clear instructions were formalised by Greg in an email sent at 8:16 pm Friday night, which said the following.

I would have preferred to have had Shooters and FF in the mix but the final deals are:
Victoria – Greens put WLP at number 2 and WLP has Greens first of majors and drops Shooters and FF/Christian groups below majors.
NSW – Greens preference WLP at 3, with Pirates at 2, and WLP puts Greens above FF, Shooters and Christian Right.
WA – Greens preference WLP at 2 and WLP puts Greens first of major parties and above Christian right and Shooters.
The Shooters and some parties on the right will probably put WLP below the majors as a result of these deals.

Nothing further was heard until Sunday, when I woke up to find that the WLP ticket in NSW had the Shooters & Fishers — and the Nazi Australia First party! — above the Greens. In WA, the Nationals were above the Greens.
I was dumbstruck.
Over the next few hours, social media exploded with outrage — in my view, much of it justified. Supporters melted away. Our base evaporated. The view within the party that preferencing the far Right would not lead to any mass outrage, but that average punters couldn’t care less about preferences, was comprehensively demolished by the course of events.
Members resigned en masse. Volunteers and Volunteer coordinators were heartbroken and could not bring themselves to work for the cause to which they had previously devoted themselves selflessly.
A statement was put out about an “administrative error” in NSW. I do not know precisely what happened, but I can say what I know — taking precautions, as one must, to protect the presumed innocence of individuals.
In NSW, I cannot imagine that the preferencing of the Nazis was anything other than a mistake — as far as I know nobody ever contemplated putting them anywhere but the bottom. As for the Shooters & Fishers, there was a deal on the table but it was rejected; indeed the Shooters & Fishers preferenced Wikileaks very low. The initial view was that the party had submitted a mistake; and indeed on it face it looks like it could not have been anything else. Possibly from a prior draft preference list, right-wing parties were mistakenly not moved down. But subsequent evidence has come to light that it may not have been entirely a mistake. What combination of factors, however, I cannot say — and an independent review was called for precisely to establish what did happen.
In WA, in my mind there was no doubt that if there had been any suggestion of Labor, Liberal or National parties being placed above Greens, the council would have exploded in uproar. Certainly I would have fought tooth and nail to stop it. The State was presented and discussed as if it were uncontroversial. The instructions were worded to put “Greens first of major parties”. Gerry, the WA lead candidate who was entrusted to fill in the remaining details of preferences, does not think the WA Nationals are a “major” party. He says he checked to confirm the Nationals were not to be understood as a “major” party. The National Council, however, was not asked to confirm.
What combination of factors, again, I cannot say — an independent review would establish that. What I can say is that it was a disaster and a betrayal to Scott Ludlam, and I can only apologise for not having been more proactive in defending him.
As things have turned out, given the views and the people within the party, and the response as received, and it was always going to be difficult to achieve a non-catastrophic outcome. Strong commitment at the center of the party to deals seen as unscrupulous and unprincipled by supporters was a train wreck waiting to happen. Having to fight such outcomes so hard to avoid them, only to see them reappear, while fighting a decline in internal democracy, shows the dysfunction of a party of which I can no longer be a part.
The final straw for me was Julian’s explanation of the fiasco on Triple J hack on Tuesday night — after a full day of frantic communication within the party, including to his inbox.
He said the following, in flagrant contradiction of everything that had been happening within the party, going to him and his inbox.

There was a decision that preferences would be done by the states, by the candidates in the states.

This is wrong. Preferences decisions were made by the National Council and were binding on the party. It was only in Julian’s proposal that candidates were given free rein over preferencing — and that proposal also gave Julian veto power and reduced the National Council to a sham, and was rejected.

In WA there’s no decision to preference the nationals ahead of Scott Ludlam. There was a decision to preference a new entrant into the WA political field, an Australian Aboriginal, who happens to be a member of the National Party, and to symbolically, I suppose, display him in the preference list… Where possible, where we see shining stars in individual parties, like Scott, or this guy from the Nats, we should individually preference them higher.

This might be interpreted as a poor excuse, but it is also wrong. It was not just the Aboriginal Nationals candidate referred to, David Wirrpanda, who is above Ludlam. Both Nationals candidates are preferenced, as are the candidates of several other parties.

Now what happened in WA was not a mistake, it was a reflection of my mandate to WA, that Scott Ludlam as an individual was to be preferenced highly, but minors who didn’t have a chance of getting elected would be put in front of him, which is normally what is done.

If Julian has talked to anyone in the party at all within the last several days, or checked his email inbox, he knows at least the outline of what is going on. And he should know that the perceived betrayal of Scott is precisely one of the factors causing members, volunteers, coordinators, and now National Council members to desert the party. He upset already-heartbroken volunteers and activists further with this statement.
Nor does Julian have any mandate of his own over preferences. He could have set up a party where he had autocratic power, the power to mandate preferences. But he did not. He and his father set up a party that had a reasonably democratic structure, with a democratic National Council. Without that internal democracy I would never have agreed to join the Council, and as it is reduced to a sham I must leave it.
The National Council this morning put out a statement calling for an immediate review. Immediately it was undermined from within the party, with calls for delays and more. I needed no further confirmation. But I still waited until concerned council members had exhausted all possible options. They are now exhausted. I must resign.
I feel very sorry for all those who remain behind in the party, or who have left because of the disillusionment this has caused them. I know that dozens have put their heart and soul into this party because they believed it to be a party of principle, a party of integrity. I know thousands rushed to join a party they thought they could believe in, and millions around the world have been inspired and have taken courage because of the actions of Wikileaks and Julian Assange. I can only apologise to them for not having worked harder to defend the principles of the party; but I know that, had I stayed on, it would have been an increasingly losing battle.
I know I may be criticised for jumping ship instead of weathering the storm. But the public, and especially the party’s supporters, deserve to know what happened and what has happened behind the scenes in this fiasco within the party of transparency, and I have decided that this is the best course of action.
For those that continue in the party, I wish them luck and all the best. The candidates are without exception remarkable people, highly qualified, experts in diverse fields, committed, hard-working, outstanding, talented human beings. If nothing else, I am glad that a party has arisen which has attracted people of this calibre to stand for electoral office. I continue to support all the party’s candidates.
Hopefully the revelations here help those inside and outside the party to clear the air and decide their own next move. They now know something of the internal structure and politics. Hopefully those who stay can reclaim its internal democracy and rebuild the support base from the movement that has swept it into existence. I will continue to support that movement as best I can, but now from the outside.
* * *
Having resigned, I can now say that in WA I would encourage voters to put Scott Ludlam first, and the Wikileaks candidates next. Scott’s unrelenting support for Wikileaks and Julian Assange, for transparency and civil liberties — even as against a stonewalling government, even as against a bipartisan consensus, and even as the Wikileaks party apparently betrayed him — speaks volumes about a man who I must now endorse even above my own previous party.
The two Wikileaks candidates in WA are excellent and if they stay on, I have great respect for them, although I disagree with Gerry’s decision to preference the Nationals. Gerry has his reasons and he has stated them repeatedly; he has his principles and I respect them. His record of courageous journalism and transparency fully qualifies him for the #2 spot. Suresh Rajan is also an excellent candidate and deserves #3.
In NSW, the Wikileaks candidates Kellie Tranter and Alison Bronoiwski are fantastic people for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, and if they continue, I recommend giving them the highest preferences. I would recommend putting the Greens above the major parties, and obviously Australia First and Shooters & Fishers down the bottom.
The Victorian candidates Leslie Cannold and Binoy Kampmark are top-notch thinkers, deeply committed, remarkable human beings and would shake this country up as senators. I am not sure they will stay on, but I wish them the best in any case.
As for Julian, I am afraid that my experiences with this party are not all positive. It pains me, as we have been friends since university days, we used to make maths puzzles together, and I helped him in the founding of Wikileaks — from 2006 until 2008, when I was outrageously sued by a Swiss bank over some Wikileaks publications, and won. I am sorry that I must leave the party under these circumstances.
He really ought not to have set up a party with internal democracy. As his own political self, he has many innovative ideas, influence, eloquence, knowledge, and skills. Despite recent events, his election as a senator is still probably the most potent possible outcome of the upcoming election. And of course, we must never forget that the publications of Wikileaks have changed the world, and Julian has become an historic figure and icon. His potential extradition to the US must be resisted at all costs.
He is, however, his own man, and not one suited to a party with democratic National Council oversight. I wish him luck and all the best for the election and the future.
— Dr Daniel V. Mathews, 21/8/13

The night before crucifixion, it may seem that one can only pray, even those who brook no quarter with the supernatural.
In such dark hours, however, there is, if nothing else, the literature left by other worthy souls who have served their own time deep in the annals of human cruelty and suffering.
Manning’s humility, his industriousness, his efficiency, his convictions, courage, rationalist outlook, humanism, his persecution and outsider status, his suffering at the hands of an outrageous american court process — and above all his commitment to knowledge, education and light as the way forward for human society — cannot but recall the tribulations of a figure from almost a century past.
Whatever one may think of Bartolomeo Vanzetti, it is impossible to deny the power and the beauty of his memoir, written as an unjustly condemned man.
As Manning stands in Gethsemane, one can do little more than offer an extraordinary extract, which resonates from history and could not be said better today.

The Book of Life: that is the Book of Books! All the others merely teach how to read this one. The honest books, I mean; the dishonest ones have an opposite purpose.
Meditation over this great book determined my actions and my principles. I denied that “Every man for himself and God for all!” I championed the weak, the poor, the oppressed, the simple and the persecuted. I admired heroism, strength and sacrifice when directed towards the triumph of justice. I understood that in the name of God, of Law, of the Patria, of Liberty, of the purest mental abstractions, of the highest human ideals, are perpetrated and will continue to be perpetrated, the most ferocious crimes; until the day when by the acquisition of light it will no longer be possible for the few, in the name of God, to do wrong to the many.
I understood that man cannot trample with immunity upon the unwritten laws that govern his life, he cannot violate the ties that bind him to the universe. I understood that the mountains, the seas, the rivers called “natural boundaries” were formed before man, by a complexity of physical and chemical processes, and not for the purpose of dividing peoples.
I grasped the concept of fraternity, of universal love. I maintained that whosoever benefits or hurts a man, benefits or hurts the whole species. I sought my liberty in the liberty of all; my happiness in the happiness of all. I realized that the equity of deeds, of rights and of duties, is the only moral basis upon which could be erected a just human society. I earned my bread by the honest sweat on my brow. I have not a drop of blood on my hands, nor on my conscience.
I understood that the supreme goal of life is happiness. That the eternal and immutable bases of human happiness are health, peace of conscience, the satisfaction of animal needs, and a sincere faith. I understood that every individual had two I’s, the real and the ideal, that the second is the source of all progress, and that whatever wants to make the first seem equal to the second is in bad faith. The difference in any one person between his two egos is always the same, because whether in perfection or in degeneration, they keep the same distance between them.
I understood that man is never sufficiently modest towards himself and that true wisdom is in tolerance.
I wanted a roof for every family, bread for every mouth, education for every heart, the light for every intellect.
I am convinced that human history has not yet begun; that we find ourselves in the last period of the prehistoric. I see with the eyes of my soul how the sky is suffused with the rays of the new millennium.
I maintain that liberty of conscience is as inalienable as life. I sought with all my power to direct the human spirit to the good of all. I know from experience that rights and privileges are still won and maintained by force, until humanity shall have perfected itself.
In the real history of future humanity — classes and privileges, the antagonisms of interest between man and man abolished — progress and change will be determined by intelligence and the common convenience.
If we and the generation which our women carry under their bosoms do not arrive nearer to that goal, we shall not have obtained anything real, and humanity will continue to be more miserable and unhappy.
I am and shall be until the last instant (unless I should discover that I am in error) an anarchist-communist, because I believe that communism is the most humane form of social contract, because I know that only with liberty can man rise, become noble, and complete.
Now? At the age of thirty-three — age of Christ and according to certain learned alienists, the age of offenders generally — I am scheduled for prison and for death. Yet, were I to recommence the “Journey of Life,” I should tread the same road, seeking, however, to lessen the sum of my sins and errors and to multiply that of my good deeds.
I send to my comrades, to my friends, to all good men my fraternal embrace, love and fervent greetings!

To PFC Manning, to his friends, too all good women and men, fraternal embrace, love and fervent greetings too!