And so to frisky Fred Nile, and the gender wars ...

And so we turn to the ongoing gender wars.

You might recall that over the weekend, a personage as august as Anthony Albanese advised that Julia Gillard had got it wrong in relation to the gender wars (the class war too).

That might have been about the same time as people were reading Nile bill to ignite debate over abortion.

The deal involved is just standard corrupt horse-trading of the vote-rigging kind, with the Nile bill being contemplated so that Barry O'Farrell can score an upper house vote to privatise Newcastle Port.

In return Nile gets a fast track for his bill, which he explained in this way:

Mr Nile said the government had not given him details of the amendments it might make in the lower house but said he would not accept changes to the bill's essence. 
''The essence is to grant legal status to the unborn child in the womb,'' Mr Nile said. He denied the bill was about abortion. 
''Some Labor women are nervous and saying I am trying to ban abortion, but I have put in an exemption to all medical procedures.'' 
The bill was targeting vehicle accidents and ''all violent acts'' such as attacks on women by violent partners, he said. 

Uh huh. Now let's do a little philosophy or logic 101.

By granting legal status in this way, what Nile is asserting is that violent attacks on a foetus - the unborn child in the womb - are criminal acts, which might well involve murder, certainly manslaughter.

Naturally this loocially applies to anyone who aborts a foetus. They are killers, murderers, and anyone who is a service provider is simply supplying a killing field.

Of course Nile says he isn't trying to ban abortion, or target service providers, because he's put in an exemption to all medical procedures. Which is to say, he's exempted women and doctors from being prosecuted for going about the business of being murderers and killers. That's what they are, but he's generously allowed them an exemption.

Interestingly the woman who was eight months pregnant when she was run down by a drug-affected driver in 2009, with her baby stillborn, is on the record saying she doesn't support the bill, and that Fred Nile hadn't spoken to her about it.

Now is anyone in Barry O'Farrell's government aware of what they will be doing if they create a new criminal offence for the killing of an unborn child?

Well probably not.

O'Farrell was himself so thick that he thought he could promote a solution to Sydney's second airport by sticking it Canberra, connected by VFT. And pigs will fly ...

And he didn't have the first clue where his deal with shooters to roam national parks armed to the teeth would eventually lead him.

So in this particular case it is quite likely that O'Farrell will create a gender war furore, because he's too dumb to realise he's handing a giant baseball bat to Christian fundamentalists to assault women as killers and murderers, guilty of a criminal offence, except for that state exemption so kindly provided by Nile ...

Has anything of this filtered into the mainstream media?

Not really, with the best story doing the rounds in the student magazine Tharunka, where Ammy Singh took the time and the trouble to discuss the matter with Brodie Donegan, the mother in question, as you can read in Proposed Foetal Rights Bill May Turn Abortion into Murder.

It turns out that Nile's bill is part of a general planned legislative assault on the rights of women:

Insisting otherwise, Nile told Tharunka, “my bill completely represents Mrs Brodie Donegan’s concerns, which is why I drafted this bill.” However, the introduction of Zoe’s Law to NSW Parliament this session is expected to be accompanied by a series of more overtly anti-abortion private member’s bills presented by Fred Nile, drawing into question these remarks. 
Among these bills are proposed laws which would require pregnant women to view a foetal ultrasound and undergo counselling before proceeding with an abortion, while another would require medical practitioners to tell pregnant women that abortion causes pain to the foetus. The bills mirror emerging laws in several US states which limit abortion access to pregnant women.

Well if you follow the logic, and it's a simple remorseless fundamentalist logic, abortion causes more than pain to the foetus. By the bill proposed by Nile, it is in reality a criminal act, an assault, a killing, a murder, which requires state exemption ... the sort of state exemption you might have found in a fascist state, the sort of state exemption that should be overturned by any right-thinking Christian or Islamic fundamentalist.

Now O'Farrell has claimed there is no agreement on the bill, and reports that he's done a deal are untrue, which does little to explain why the government agreed to support an urgency motion to debate Zoe's law the very day after it won Nile's backing to private Newcastle Port.

And the men in blue ties stand ready to tell you that there is no gender war, and the gender war doesn't exist, and it's all paranoia in the minds of women, because, well, because ... women ... (shrug and sigh optional).

Meanwhile, as predictable as a sparrow's fart greets the dawn, the commentariat have wheeled in the sky in unison, and found a way to completely ignore such wretched behaviour by a state government.

Yes, it's current chairman Rudd who has sent them into a predictable Chicken Little fury.

Sure enough there's Paul Sheehan, who can never get or give out enough hate on a Monday morning, scribbling furiously in Myth man is back on his throne.

No need to read it in detail - after all, dogs only return to their vomit or munch on grass for proven medical reasons.

But it's interesting to note that inter alia, the generally grumpy Sheehan throws in this aside:

These women rightly did not vote on gender and emotion and feminist ideology but on real-world pragmatism.

That'd be the same real-world pragmatism as Barry O'Farrell is currently rolling out, deploring women for their emotion and their feminist ideology. Bloody women ... so emotional.

Meanwhile, the reptiles at the lizard Oz are in a similar sort of frenzy, a paroxysm of paranoia, as if someone had shoved a giant stick into the heart of the bullhead ant nest.

You want hysterical exaggeration? Well you surely want Greg Sheridan:

In 35 years? Either the fatuous Sheridan hasn't been paying attention, or he merely wants to remind the world why he's completely unqualified to comment on foreign policy.

Then there's Dennis "the tie" Shanahan - yes the pond was into the tie game long before Gillard - reassuring himself after the polls landed with the predictable bounce:

Phew what a relief, but remember to have a stiff drink at close of play, and let the bouffant hair sag a little in the sunset.

The rest of the pack are there, glancing over their shoulders a little nervously, not least Henry Ergas, always ready to do his tremendously effective impression of a packet of desiccated coconut, though pleasingly Troy Bramston took time out to stick another stake in the heart of Julia Gillard, assuring the world she would be denied martyrdom status, though perhaps her status over the years would shift from being a bitch witch to perhaps only a bitch ...

Anyhoo, by close of read this morning, the pond realised that there was really only one good reason for current Chairman Rudd to return, and that was to torture and frighten the bejeezus out of the commentariat, and send them off on a whole new paroxysm of bile and biliousness ...

And in so doing everybody could just say "same old, same old" and step out into the world this Monday, refreshed and ready to deal with whatever might come their way ... even the war on gender being fomented in New South Wales by Fred Nile and his henchmen, including Barry O'Farrell, who will sell anyone down the river or the port or the national park or the Canberra airport in the quest for a deal ...

Meanwhile, a couple of genuine, capable Labor people are leaving the scene. Stephen Smith was given the career-ending job of Defence and did it well, while enduring the completely unsustainable and foolish inherited policies in relation to Afghanistan, and Greg Combet has also gone, while geese like gibbering Joel Fitzgibbon are stepping up to the plate. You don't need to read the commentariat to discern what the entrails are saying ...

(Below: and so to another old but unnervingly applicable Wilcox joke)