The People's Charter

You know, one of the great qualities about Australians is our passion for a fair-go and our generosity in passing around the hat when someone is down on their luck. That’s mateship. We’re good at that because we feel for them and we’ve been known to really dig deep into our pockets for genuine hardship. Of course we also rubbish people in a mateship way – and unfortunately sometimes not so mateship – and we don’t really like tall poppies if they’re a bit up themselves. But hey, generally we’ve integrated others into our society pretty well and people adapt well to our society because of these values. Naturally we have kept our laid-back casual attitudes – she’ll be right mate – and this often is reflected in children of ethnic origins often eclipsing our Aussie kids in terms of academic excellence.

But this bill of rights, this threatens our cool. We like our fair-go. And it looks as if with specific minority groups pushing their own agendas we might lose some of our traditions that we cherish. Some of pretty fundamental attitudes and values are at risk. If I want to restrict my guest room to couples without children, why shouldn’t I? If I choose not to rent my room to a gay couple, why shouldn’t I have that choice? And if I want to belong to a men’s club, why should women be admitted? And OK, if Ned Flanders wants to send his kids to a religious school and pay for it and the school is forced to employ a male homosexual teacher, why shouldn’t he get upset?

Let’s toss out any bill of rights. It threatens a fair-go for all. Sign up for The People’s Charter – that’s right, just put thepeoplescharter and anything you like after it plus .au and you’ll get into it (but if you remember it is .net.au) or just google the peoples charter Australia and you’ll get it. Hey, pass it on to your friends to log in and your enemies will probably sign it too!