Malaysia has detained an Australian Senator under armed guard.

My best guess is that this is perhaps aimed at intimidating Anwar Ibrahim, a sort of "oh you have foreign friends, well we won't let them in" thing, but it's a pretty bushleague way to go about it, because it's an unprecedented act of international aggression.

Because, seriously. Detaining a Senator under armed guard.

This is not something that we should let happen.

Things I want to happen now:

- Since the reason Xenophon has been deemed a "security risk" can only be that he's critical of the anti-democratic everything the Malaysian government does, and the reason for the now-cancelled visit was a low-profile mission to talk to a few people about how the forthcoming Malaysian elections were likely to be run, I want Australia - and our allies, including you, USA - agitating for United Nations intervention in the election.

- And by agitating I mean insisting. I mean that Australia should demand an apology from the Malaysian government, and demand the Malaysian government accept international administration of their elections. I think we should insist on an electoral police action, like we did in East Timor, sending in the army to ensure that Malaysia gets free and fair elections, if UN observers that we demand Malaysia accept see *anything* suspect at all.

Seriously. Wars have happened over less than this. And while I don't normally advocate getting all pushy and aggressive in international relations, the scale of oh no you better didn't involved in the detention by armed guards of a serving Senator is beyond the expression by mere words. This is a mobilise your active military and start positioning them in "training exercises" scale of national offence.

From GetUp:

It's crunch time in the campaign for marriage equality. This weekend, a group of conservative pastors will ask congregations across Australia to sign a petition against equality.

They already claim some 34,000 signatures, and they're planning to deliver the petition at the ALP National Conference in a few weeks, when the party's policy on marriage equality will be decided.

The good news is that GetUp members may be able to deliver our campaign to the Prime Minister in person any day now. GetUp members earlier this year chipped in donations and won a charity auction to have dinner with Julia Gillard. Three inspirational same-sex couples are lined up to dine with Julia Gillard, and we’re expecting the big day to be in the next few weeks.

Can you help Sandy and Louise, Steve and John and Sarah and Emma ensure that they have a HUGE national petition to deliver to the PM over dinner?

So, if you're Australian, and haven't signed this petition, please do.

Also, I love GetUp *really hard* when they do things like this. A while back there was a charity auction to get surfing lessons from Tony Abbott. GetUp won that, and sent a refugee.

So, I'm watching yesterday's episode of Insiders.

At one point, discussing the usage (and the "KISS OF DEATH" headline) of the photo of Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd kissing each other on the cheek after the carbon "tax" legislation passed, Piers Akerman made the astonishing comment: "Given that we're all laughing and joking about this leadership stoush, can't we admit that there clearly is one?" (I may be paraphrasing slightly.)

To which I say: Are you kidding me?

"The media and pundits keep saying that there's a leadership challenge, even though no-one in the ALP has said so. But given that we, as pundits, are talking about it, doesn't that mean it's definitely happening?"

No. No, it doesn't.

This came after he infuriated me by suggesting that Australia shouldn't be tackling carbon emissions because any solution to the climate change issue has to be global.

I hate to break it to Jabba the Pundit (seriously, the resemblance is uncanny - I'm not down on people being overweight, but the slug-like appearance is generally only apparent on slug-like people), but the Australian government has no authority over the rest of the world or over global responses to climate change. Our best option, as something like, per capita, the worst polluter in the world, is to lead by example. To do our part.

So shut up.

New Australian passports will now have a third option for gender: If someone doesn't want to go with M for Male or F for Female, they can have their gender entered on their passport as "X".

The article quotes comments from Senator Louise Pratt, whose partner is a transgender man.

"There have been very many cases of people being detained at airports by immigration in foreign countries simply because their passports don't reflect what they look like," she said.

"It's very distressing, highly inconvenient and frankly sometimes dangerous."

DFAT (the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) has also, however, apparently issued a warning that this *can* cause problems crossing some international borders. Which is not so good, but that's not really within DFAT's purview, because the Australian DFAT does not actually control the affairs of foreigners.

Neither is the matter of birth certificates, which come under state law. Senator Pratt and a Connor Montgomery quoted in the article (whom I presume from context to be her partner) both say national reform on that question is necessary, but that's something that the Federal Government can encourage but not legislate, so.

Still, it's pretty significant, especially since you can get by without a birth certificate, especially if you have a passport. (Believe me, I know - I don't know where my birth certificate is, and even if I did, I believe it would be borderline useless in a number of respects, not least because it doesn't actually have my parents' names on it.)

So. Yay for Australia!

Watching the news: a piece on upcoming welfare reform plans, in which the government is planning to run a trial program of pushing teenage parents into work or educational programs. My opinion on this is reserved until I know more about it; in general terms I'm quite strongly in favour of the apparent current government approach to the long-term unemployed, which is: "Well, if they're long-term unemployed in the current economy, they obviously don't have useful employable skills, so we need to provide educational opportunities to give them those skills."

Given that there's currently an apparent push to welfare reform despite the fact that, according to economists, we effectively have full employment at the moment, I'm in favour of a pro-education approach.

Anyway, that's not the point, really.

The thing that struck me was a shot of Julia Gillard, our Prime Minister, being offered a baby to interact with. You see the baby in front of her, being held up. Camera flashes start going off to the side.

Julia Gillard cups her hand by the baby's face, shielding its eyes from the flashes.

It's a strangely tender moment. There's a perceptiveness there, a caring about the baby as a tiny person rather than a political prop.

Julia Gillard, at heart, is someone who cares.

I honestly believe that she has the potential to be one of Australia's greatest ever Prime Ministers, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. The problem with her as a leader is that she'll be doing well in a given area, but then, it seems, she'll be influenced by the shadowy, factional power blocs in the ALP and seem fake and weak again - giving fodder along the way to the Liberal Party.

It's so frustrating. The current leader of the Liberal Party is Tony "the Mad Monk" Abbott, a man who has been widely loathed across the country since before I was old enough to vote, I think. We hated him when he was the Health Minister under John Howard, he continues to be creepy, offensive, and unpleasant... and yet the Liberal Party is doing shockingly well.

If the Liberal Party is beind led by Tony Abbott and yet is not polling in single digits, every other party is failing itself, failing Australia, and failing the world.

Writing Paper.

Last night I went to the Officeworks down the road to buy writing paper, because I owe my great-aunt a letter several months ago, ditto my cousin, and I wanted proper letter-writing paper to write on, since "printer paper" just doesn't scream "I value you and our communication" to me.

When I was younger, I wrote a lot more letters than I do these days. It's not just the advent of everyone-has-email-now - it was also that my grandmother was still alive, and I wrote to her (not enough, but I did). Nowadays I'm in contact with new elderly relatives, but I'm still terrible at correspondence, so it was allowed to happen that I didn't have any decent paper.

I remember pads of airmail paper. Maybe they still have them at the post office, though I don't remember seeing them last time I was at one, but certainly not at Officeworks. Instead I have "parchment"-style tinted paper that is all heavy, relatively speaking - I just don't mind so much because I'm planning to send other stuff along as well.

Video games.

I started playing a flight/combat simulator called Wings of Prey. It's a World War Two game. My impressions so far:

- The controls are complicated, but as I'm gradually getting used to them, I'm finding they work. You're never going to be entirely uncomplicated when you have to control flaps, ailerons, and rudder just for steering, as well as needing weapon controls, throttle controls, and controls for issuing wing commands... among other things. In a tutorial mission I got some praise for a landing from the instructor that felt quite undeserved, because yes, I touched down flawlessly, but on the other hand, I couldn't find the wheel brake and coasted at high speed across the runway, into the neighbouring field, then flipped my Spitfire over a hedge and blew up.

- It's very, very pretty. So far I've mainly flown around only over Dover and Hardinge, but they've laid out the towns and the harbour below rather delightfully.

- But some of the voice acting is remarkably, spectacularly terrible. While some is quite good. I am not sure how they managed that, since I can't help but think that they could have found a better voice actor for Owen Wright (I think his name is) if they'd opened the door to their offices and grabbed the first dude to come past, tied him to a chair, and had him read the lines without even telling him what they were for.

For most of the last week, my previous obsession with Pokemon Black has given way to obsessively playing Final Fantasy: Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift instead. Kupo.

Australian politics.

Concetta Fieravanti-Wells is an unpleasant-seeming person. I have a strong feeling that I couldn't have an extended conversation with her without wanting to tell her to shut the hell up.

People are talking positively about former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally in the wake of the NSW Labor Party's electoral decimation, and it's pretty clear that NSW Labor was basically toxic and has been for some years. There's a certain rot that seems to set into parties who've held power for too long, and NSW Labor seems to have been rotted through quite thoroughly.

However, I can't help but think that if I lived in New South Wales, I would have been uncomfortable with having her as my Premier not just because she wasn't elected Premier, but also because she's American. She was born, raised, and educated in America. She only moved to Australia in the late 90s and became an Australian citizen in 2000.

I don't think of myself as at all xenophobic, and I don't, in principle or in practice, have a problem with first-generation immigrants running for political office. Hell, I am a first-generation immigrant. Prime Minister Julia Gillard, our current head of government, was not born in Australia, and I don't have a problem with that.

But Keneally entered Parliament in 2003. She had then been living in Australia not more than about five years. That's just not long enough. And the approximately ten years she'd been living in Australia when she became State Premier of New South Wales is really truly not enough - especially since she apparently joined the Labor Party in 2000, too, which means she's basically been a political hack the entire time. It's like she came to Australia and immediately set out to take over.

I think there should be a sort of legal minimum residency period before you get to run actual Australian governments. Let's say eighteen years - your Australian-ness needs to be old enough to be a legal adult before you get to run any part of our country.

Because otherwise it's just weird.

I'm watching the last Q&A. There's a representative from One Nation there, who's declaring that the problem with Muslim immigration is that "we have a religion", etc, this whole extended speech that basically assumes Australian = Christian. A mixture of outrage/anger and laughter from the audience to various comments, and he says that he doesn't "understand why this is funny".

Because, Ian Nelson, Australia is not a "Christian country". We are a secular country, and we are, actually, a multicultural country, even if a lot of people who talk about multiculturalism don't seem to have any real idea of what that means and as a nation we're actually pretty terrible at being multicultural.

We're reasonably good about trying, at least, not to be discriminatory. We're not so good at intercultural inclusiveness - we have a bit of a problem with people who think that the way to recognise a multiplicity of religions and cultures is to try and eliminate the outward expressions of the dominant culture.

I think that's wrong. I think that the way you recognise that you have a plurality of cultures is to recognise all of them. I think that the problem of the dominance of Christian festivals - though celebrated in a thoroughly secular way - is best addressed by promoting the widespread celebration of the other festivals as well. I want an Australia where Eid and Diwali and Chinese New Year are a big deal, not one where Christmas isn't.

As for the people bitching about why Australia as a whole should be paying for the reconstruction of Queensland: Because Queensland is part of Australia. Because this is our country. So shut up.

1) Hypocritical evangelical atheists.

There's a looong list of people who fall into this category, but it's an opinion piece on The Drum website that's set me off today.

Basically, I'm talking about your PZ Myers/Richard Dawkins types, who are not only atheists, but are hostile to non-atheists and hostile to the very notion of treating religion with respect.

In this column Bob Ellis accuses the Prime Minister of "theological correctness" because she "turned up to honour Mary MacKillop" despite being an atheist.

To which I say: what the hell?

Yes, the Prime Minister is an atheist.

However, she is still the Prime Minister. In much the same way, it would not be inappropriate for her to attend a major event for the beef farming industry if she were a vegetarian. Because she's the head of our bloody government, and her duties thereas are not subject entirely to her personal whim.

Evangelical atheists aggravate me in general, because it's so... I don't know. Tacky. Rude. Irritating.

I have friends who are atheists. I have friends whose religious inclinations I don't really know at all. I have friends whose religions are different from mine - across the spectrum. A Hindu agnostic is not quite the same thing as a Christian agnostic, after all - if someone is taking the non-existence of the Judeo-Christian God as a given, but is ambivalent about the Hindu gods, that's a very different outlook from someone who is uncertain about the existence of the Judeo-Christian God but assumes that the Hindu gods aren't real.

(Religion is more complex than just the three Abrahamic religions, after all, and very few people even consider the ancient pantheons at all. Zeus, for most people, is just assumed to be a false myth.)

All of us manage to get by without sneering at each other over this.

I can go weeks, even months at a time without mentioning specifically that I consider myself to be a Christian at all.

I think both Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers would rupture something if they tried to go even a few days without a diatribe about the non-existence of God.

I consider it a firm point of basic courtesy that, unless someone has attempted to convert you to their religious position, it is entirely inappropriate to try and persuade them of yours.

And I consider it somewhat reprehensible to accuse someone of duplicity merely for showing respect to a position that differs from their own. They keep saying how Gillard "despises" Christianity, and yet: no, patently she doesn't, she just doesn't agree with it.

So, Australia has a government!

My thoughts:

1) Thank God. Specifically, thank God we have a Labor government - setting aside my fundamental ideological conflicts with the Liberal Party and the Coalition, the current Coalition is a monumental clusterfuck of incompetence, bad judgement and dubious sanity.

One should not spend as much time saying: "Wait - he did what?" as I have in the last couple of weeks about people who aspire to run your country.

Granted, if I were British or American, I would have been doing so for quite some time, but I'm Australian - I'm used to a more low-key politics, where an argument about a ute qualifies as a massive scandal.

2) Shut up, Tony Abbott and all his supporters, about "they got more votes so they should get to be the government" or "they got more seats so they should get to be the government". Because this is patently not true. Labor won the two-party-preferred and the Liberal Party have never won more seats - they're part of a Coalition, and the Coalition did not beat the Labor/Greens alliance, and more importantly, the Labor/Greens/Independents alliance won enough seats to form the bloody Government. You know how we can tell?

Because they're forming Government. The independents are still independent, but they've pledged to vote with the Government on supply bills and any motions of no confidence, which means that the government will hold.

The fact that the government will need to get any other legislation past the gauntlet of the Greens and two rural independents is potentially the best thing to happen to Australia in decades.

3) Dear Julia Gillard,

Congratulations on becoming Australia's first woman Prime Minister for real. I am, genuinely, glad that you are not to be an odd footnote of history, because that would have been very sad, for more reasons than just that it would mean the Mad Monk being our Prime Minister.

Now, please tell the faceless party men who keep feeding you soundbites to shut the hell up, because when you are yourself - caught unprepared, by creepy ex-Leaders of your party or the Chaser, for example - you are magnificent. Composed and classy as all get out - you are someone I can be proud to see as the leader of my country.

By comparison, when you're making scripted remarks, or being the "new Julia", or any of that PR flack crap, I cringe with sympathetic embarrassment at how terrible you seem at, well, everything.

Be yourself, please, because I have a sneaking suspicion you're actually kind of awesome.

Also, change the photo on your profile on the Parliamentary website. You're a beautiful woman, but God knows if I'd only looked at that photo I'd never know it. A picture tells a thousand words, but those words should not be a short work of fiction detailing how you'll get pretty Dorothy - and her little dog, too.

Best wishes,
Sami.

4) Dear people who got frustrated by the hung parliament situation and wanted to "go back to the polls",

You're morons. We have a preferential voting system. If we'd held another election we would have got ourselves another hung Parliament, and if knowing that a hung Parliament was likely would change how you voted, you clearly voted like a moron the first time, and I don't feel this qualifies you for a second go.

If you voted informal, and now realise that had the informal votes been formal, they would have made the difference in just about every electorate in the country: suck it up, you have only yourself to blame, and maybe next time you will give proper consideration to the importance of the democratic franchise, hmm? (Also, your actions mildly disgust me.)

Grow up,
Sami.

5) Oakeshott is looking pretty awesome. I read his quasi-White Paper on parliamentary reform (yes, all of it), and it's kind of brilliant.

6) No, Wilkie didn't set a honey trap. He just gave due consideration to the fact that the Liberals' response was patently ill-considered, and they were clearly just trying to buy his support.