Is a boong a bung?

(A "bung" in current British slang is a bribe or a kickback -- with the "u" pronounced as in "cup" -- but I am not referring to that)

There has always been a certain amount of controversy about how Australia's indigenous blacks should be referred to. With admirable simplicity, they themselves usually refer to themselves as "blackfellas", but by far the most common term among whites is "Abo" -- which is an abbreviation of the Latin term for them: Aborigines.

In less polite circles, however, they have long been referred to as "boongs", with the "oo" pronounced as in "book".

Being rather interested in onomastics, I have always wondered a little about where that term comes from. My best guess was that it was a variation on an actual Aboriginal name.

Different Aboriginal tribes had different names for themselves. In what is now NSW, I gather that "Murri" was common and where I grew up in far North Queensland at least some aboriginies referred to themselves as "Boories" (again with "oo" pronounced as in "book"). And the old timers in my own family, who generally knew Aborigines very well, did often refer to them as "Boories".

So my best guess was that "boong" was either a corruption or a variant on "boorie".

I note however that in Indonesia -- which us very much on Australia's doorstep -- the term "bung" (pronounced exactly like "boong", as far as I can establish) means "brother" and is basically a friendly term.

So is that where Australians got "boong" from? It's possible. In the old days aborigines and whites often got on well, despite what you would think from reading Leftist historians. I speak about that from knowledge of events in my own family history and Windschuttle has thoroughly debunked the Leftist historians anyway.

I note that Wictionary has a similar take on the word





Are Greenies now experts on theology?

Greens' policies more Christian than Cardinal George Pell, says Bob Brown. I accept that Bob may be an expert on global warming theology but I suspect that a Cardinal knows more about Catholicism than Bob does.

Bob also seems to be a one-man opinion poll: Not good polling methodology

AUSTRALIA'S Catholic leader Cardinal George Pell has taken up the rhetoric of the extreme right and his views do not represent mainstream Christian thinking, Greens leader Bob Brown says.

Senator Brown says Australian Greens' policies are much closer to mainstream Christian ideals than the Sydney Archbishop's ideas. He was responding to criticism of the Greens by Cardinal Pell in an opinion piece published in News Ltd newspapers yesterday.

Cardinal Pell wrote the Greens were hostile to the notion of the family and the party would allow marriage regardless of sexuality or gender. He said the Greens were "thoroughly anti-Christian".

Senator Brown, in reply, said Cardinal Pell's "anti-Christian" claim was a lie, and that he had fallen out of touch with his people. "The good archbishop has forgotten the ninth commandment, which is 'thou shall not bear false witness against thy neighbour'," Senator Brown said. "He's lost the ethic of the golden rule and the Greens have kept it.

"The Greens are much closer to mainstream Christian thinking than Cardinal Pell. "That's why he's not standing for election and I am."

The Catholics the senator spoke to support an end to discrimination, he said. "They support compassion to asylum seekers and they support the BER (Building the Education Revolution) scheme, like the Greens do," he said. "Cardinal Pell opposes those things."

Senator Brown said the archbishop's views on gay marriage were "discriminatory and biased". "The majority of Catholics support equality in marriage (as do) the majority of Christians in Australia," he said.

"The Greens are with the majority but both the big parties, like Cardinal Pell, are opposed to 21st Century majority thinking in Australia. "He's lost contact with his own voters ... his own Catholic majority in this country."

In his article, Cardinal Pell wrote the Greens' once claimed that humans are simply another smarter animal - an ethic designed to replace Judeo-Christianity. He said some Greens are "like watermelons, green outside and red inside". "A number were Stalinists, supporting Soviet oppression," he wrote.

Senator Brown said Cardinal Pell had "taken up the rhetoric of the extreme right in Australia". "That is not new but he has become very politically active against the compassion and the environmental commonsense of the Greens policies," he said.

SOURCE

The column in the Sunday Telegraph by His Eminence does not now seem to be online at its original source so I excerpt it below. He headed his column with "The Greens are Anti-Christian". In answer to the question of how people should vote in the coming election, he replied:

First of all they should look at the policies and personal views of the individual candidates. Good and wise people are needed in the major political parties. Many, including myself, are concerned about the environment and so my second point was to urge my listeners to examine the policies of the Greens on their website and judge for themselves how thoroughly anti-Christian they are.

In 1996 the Green leader Bob Brown co-authored short book, The Greens, with the notorious philosopher Peter Singer (now at Princeton University) who rejects the unique status of humans and supports infanticide as well as abortion and euthanasia. They claimed humans are simply another smarter animal so that humans and animals are on the same or similar levels depending on the level of consciousness.

This Green ethic is designed to replace Judaeo-Christianity. Some Greens have taken this anti-Christian line further by claiming that no religious argument should be permitted in public debate. Not surprisingly they are often consistent on this issue, welcoming Christian support for refugees, but denying that any type of religious reasoning should be allowed on other matters.

One wing of the Greens are like watermelons, green outside and red inside. A number were Stalinists, supporting Soviet oppression. A few years ago they even tried unsuccessfully to use the privileges committee of the NSW Legislative Council to silence religious voices in public debate.

The Greens are opposed to religious schools and would destroy the rights of those schools to hire staff and control enrolments. Funding for non-government schools would be returned to the levels of 2003-04. Already in Canberra, Green pressure was one factor in the attacks on Calvary Hospital because they were not providing abortions.

We all accept the necessity of a healthy environment, but Green policies are impractical and expensive, which will not help the poor.

For those who value our present way of life, the Greens are sweet camouflaged poison.

More HERE





Christian candidate bullied for her Christian stance on homosexuality

An Australian Senate candidate was under fire Monday for comparing the allowing of gay marriage to "legalizing child abuse," a Sydney newspaper reported. Wendy Francis, who is attempting to win a seat in Queensland for the conservative Family First party, made her views known in a Twitter message Sunday which has since been deleted.

"Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse. Legitimizing gay marriage is like legalizing child abuse," the message read. "Australia would never recover from legalizing gay marriage. Those who advocate this are not thinking of the dramatic consequences," it continued.

Francis has previously expressed similar views in media releases, Australian media blog Crikey reported.

A media release on her website, which has also since been deleted, read: "Homosexuals who are pushing for this don't care about children; they care only about their selfish desires. "Children in homosexual relationships are subject to emotional abuse and legitimizing gay marriage is like legalizing child abuse," it continued.

The Australian Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby called the comments "offensive."

"Comments which characterize same-sex families as promoting emotional abuse towards children is deeply, deeply frustrating and offensive," the group's policy and development coordinator Senphorun Raj said.

"In Australia there over 4,380 children living in same-sex families, and to have children in those families be stigmatized by such comments, stigmatizing their same-sex parents, disenfranchises those children and effectively promotes attitudes of homophobia that will continue to marginalize and ostracize children and parents living in same-sex families."

Thousands of Twitter users responded to Francis' comments, some calling them "baseless and astounding."

SOURCE. More details here




Government hospitals a vital election issue

Yet more bureaucracy is not the solution to their woes

Many policies differentiate the major parties, from border control to paid parental leave, but on the most basic policy issue, healthcare, where structural inefficiencies can kill people, the difference between Labor and the Coalition is stark.

Put aside the bids and counter-bids of extra millions of dollars and hospital beds. The real difference is deeper and structural. As prime minister Rudd, typically, announced a sweeping reform of the national hospital system. His proposed reform bore the classic trademarks of Ruddism. It centralised more power in Canberra. It established yet another layer of bureaucracy. It did not challenge the power of the public sector unions.

RuddCare, which Gillard has inherited, does not even diagnose, let alone treat, the cancer within the healthcare system - the bloated, inefficient, micro-managing centralised state government bureaucracies which suck resources away from front-line health services.

"Labor's decision to change the public hospital governance structure in NSW from eight Area Health Services to 15 Local Hospital Networks is nothing but a re-naming of the Titanic," the chairman of the department of medicine at Sydney Hospital and Sydney Eye Hospital, John Graham, told me last week.

"Both federal and state Labor have stuck the public hospital system with a bureaucracy of enormous proportions. It means there is a huge difference with Abbott and the Coalition because they are prepared to move funds, extra beds and local management back into the hospitals. They are committed to having an autonomous, pro bono board of directors at every public hospital. I think this reform would eventually end the need for state health bureaucracies.

"That would deliver a huge economic benefit because only doctors and nurses and pharmacists and physiotherapists and other front-line health workers can create the reality of healthcare, while the bureaucrats waste at least $10 billion a year of precious health dollars."

I can't vouch for his estimate, but it sits plausibly with the pattern of Whitlamesque excesses that have been the hallmark of the Rudd-Gillard government.

The federal government presents the fiction that it is a font of efficient compassion on healthcare. When the federal Minister of Health, Nicola Roxon, released a summary of RuddCare's proposed reforms on July 7, her statement concluded with a preposterous claim: "These measures build on the 50 per cent increase in hospital funding by the government."

Fifty per cent? How about zero? Lifting the federal government's share of spending on the health system from 40 per cent to 60 per cent simply represented a shift of 20 per cent of health spending from state governments to Canberra. It was a shift in power, not a 50 per cent surge in spending.

Roxon and Gillard have both repeated ad nauseam the accusation the Howard government, and Abbott in particular, "stripped a billion dollars out of the hospital system". It cannot withstand scrutiny.

When the Howard government introduced a tax rebate on private health insurance, it took pressure off the public hospitals as people moved to private care. The government was able to move $1 billion, earmarked for public hospitals, to tax relief for health insurance payments. It was a shift of spending, not a reduction.

So great is the growing gap between rhetoric and reality that Gillard not answering simple questions is a symptom of something much deeper: an abdication of public honesty in the pursuit of power.

SOURCE