At last, liberation theology reaches the pond ...

Liberated, liberation, call it what you will, it's a curious concept:

Now on one level the pond understands. Abbott was searching for a form of words, a kindly way to exit proceedings, and reaching for 'liberated' was about as far as he could go. When you're a bear with very little brain and the honey pot is just out of reach, the odds of getting stuck in a verbal hole are high.

That it was deeply fatuous and required subbies to reach for inverted commas - 'liberated' - says a lot about the inner man.

It was as if he was at a funeral, and he turned to grieving widow or widower and said "look on the bright side, at least now you'll be liberated and able to pursue opportunities, without that silly old bugger/buggeress hanging around your neck, holding you back".

So in a bid to be consoling, this is what he said:

Mr Abbott has conceded that some workers will have difficulty finding new jobs. 
 "Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives," he said. 
 "We have to accept that what was right for people 10 years ago or 20 years ago is not necessarily going to be right or possible for them far into the future, and we do have to be prepared to adapt - individually and collectively." (here)

On the obvious level, it's risible.

Re-training isn't easy, and the far-fetched notion that with a wave of the hand, the 'liberated' will head off to mining jobs, or take up work in re-located federal government departments - all eager to be based in Adelaide - is just sky-hook dreaming.

The reality, as already shown in the exits of the likes of Mitsubishi and Ford, is that a substantial number will join the ranks of the long-term unemployed and an equally substantial number will get screwed over in the short-term, brutal, casual contract labour market.

But the pond doesn't deal with the obvious. What's more interesting is the way Abbott liberated the word, and mangled its use:

1. given liberty; freed; released 
1. To set free, as from oppression, confinement, or foreign control. 
3. (Sociology) (esp in feminist theory) not bound by traditional sexual and social roles 
2. liberated - free from traditional social restraints; "an emancipated young woman pursuing her career"; "a liberated lifestyle" (more at the dictionary here).

Yes, it's a most peculiar word, deeply embedded in the theology of the 1960s hippie. Work is such a drag, you see, and freedom from work is to be released from deep, dire oppression. And as a bonus you're able to pursue a liberated social lifestyle.

Never mind that you'll be in poverty, or stony-broke, skint, as they used to say, you'll be liberated, and Tim Wilson will be fighting hard for your freedom, not that you'll need him, because you'll have this enormous sense of liberation.

Not many paid much attention, but James Jeffrey, sheltered amongst the lizards at the Oz, did:

One of our favourite euphemisms in the hiring 'n' firing game is the concept of letting someone go. This makes it sound like an act of mercy, as if a boss has spotted an employee straining against their manacles and, in a fit of humanity, emancipated them. So we dips our lid to Tony Abbott for making his small but worthwhile contribution to the genre yesterday during his joint press conference with Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane: "Now, some of the Mitsubishi workers have struggled to find work, others have had, I suppose, almost a rebirth of their working lives and I dare say, it will be same for the people currently at Ford and Holden when manufacturing stops. Some of them will find it difficult, but many of them will probably be liberated to pursue new opportunities and to get on with their lives. (here, behind the paywall, because there's way too much liberation doing the rounds)

If you've ever been in the hiring and firing game, you'll know the look of joy on those just given a job, and the devastation of the eyes of someone who has just been given a bullet, just been sacked, just been dumped, just, it has to be said, told to fuck off because they are surplus to needs and requirements.

Handling it with any sensitivity is hard, but using "liberated to pursue new opportunities" is as callow as it gets, right up there with that fictional funeral director explaining that now you're free, and you can get on with that new life and that fourth marriage you've been longing to have a go at ... (well some like the pond love marriage so much they can never get enough of it).

Meanwhile, Christian Kerr is maintaining his relentless, awesome capacity for EXCLUSIVES:

In the usual way, the reptiles at the lizard Oz don't get it.

Wilson himself is busy pedalling away as fast as he can from political, ideological and theological divides as he found himself amongst the Fairfaxians:

He even took up the pond's Queensland challenge in Tim Wilson: As officialdom tries to dilute them, human rights must be defended:

A practical example is Wednesday's decision by the High Court on the rights of unions to donate to political parties. From a human rights perspective, the NSW laws preventing any collective of individuals seeking to speak through a common voice - unions, environmental groups, businesses and non-profits - from donating to a political party violated freedom of speech and association. 
To its credit the court unanimously struck down the NSW government's restrictions on the basis that they "impermissibly burden the implied freedom of communication on governmental and political matters, contrary to the Commonwealth constitution". 
The court's decision is important because it affirms the right to free political communication that the court found was implied in Australia's constitution two decades ago. 
Another is the Queensland government's recent anti-bikie gang laws, being adopted in other states. 
If bikies commit crimes the police should investigate and prosecute criminals. But from a human rights perspective it is entirely unjust that freedom of association should be squashed to make the job of the police easier to investigate. Rather than empowering police to prevent an already comprehensive list of crimes, these laws have created a host of new crimes that could easily be used to punish law-abiding citizens in the wrong place at the wrong time. 
Some might say my approach to preserve and protect these traditional human rights is absolutist. This is not the case. But too often we have been willing to undermine fundamental rights in the name of "balancing" them. Rights should be as absolute as possible. Universal human rights need to be upheld and protected. 
As Human Rights Commissioner it is my intention to continue defending them from being further diluted.

Indeed. Locking them up in solitary confinement for months on end, in a purely punitive, vengeful way, adopting the very worst of prison regimes from gulags, Guantanamo Bay and Arizona shows an equally sinister contempt for human rights. (No doubt Wilson will be taking a look at the treatment of refugees too).

Both the above examples come from Liberal state governments. But if Stephen Conroy and his very big filter was still around - yes the federal Liberal government also at one time flirted with such an idea - and silly Nicola Roxon, no doubt Wilson and the pond could find common ground.

It's not a matter of ideology or political leanings. Yet the lizards always insist on a partisan spin. Cue Kerr:

Uh huh, as always, it's the left's human rights hypocrisy, as if hypocrisy wasn't the common coin of all humanity.

Hang on a moment. Here's the hypocrisy and the double standard - belonging to an organisation and espousing its agenda and signing up to its 75 proposals plus 25 calling for all kinds of pie in the sky, including calling for the abolition of a body, then turning around and joining that very self-same body.

It's beyond the valley of irony, and well into the land of hypocrisy ...

Of course the pond took an immediate dislike to Ozdowski - the sight of a grown man wearing a bow tie always distorts perspective - and it wasn't helped when he immediately indulged in petty point-scoring and cheap shots:

Dr Ozdowski described as double standards the fact that critics who claimed Mr Wilson's appointment politicised the commission had stayed silent about the appointment in July of ABC presenter Tim Soutphommasane, a former fellow of left-leaning think tank Per Capita; staffer to Bob Carr during his days as NSW premier; and Hawker Britton employee who worked on Labor's successful 2007 federal election campaign. 
He also dismissed complaints that it was inappropriate to award Mr Wilson the role given that the IPA had called for the commission to be abolished, saying Labor had neglected the HRC by failing to fill the post. "At the moment, the commission is clearly out of balance," Dr Ozdowski said.

Once more, it's just left v right.

Actually, people didn't stay silent at the appointment of Soutphommasane:

In July, Senator Brandis condemned the Rudd government for appointing former ALP member and ex-Bob Carr staffer Tim Soutphommasane as Race Discrimination Commissioner. 
Senator Brandis told The Australian Dr Soutphommasane was ''yet another partisan of the Left'' who would ''not be able to win the public's confidence''. '
'Appointees must be people who can command the confidence of the entire community that they will discharge their responsibilities in the human rights field in a non-partisan manner,'' Senator Brandis told the newspaper, adding Dr Soutphommasane's appointment was part of a push to drive the debate on human rights issues towards the left. 
He told the newspaper that Dr Soutphommasane's appointment reinforced concerns that the Human Rights Commission had ''become an ideologically driven agency whose agenda lies entirely with advancing the causes of the Left''. 

And there's your problem in a nutshell. If Brandis is going to relentlessly politicise and denigrate one appointment by alleging its on party political lines, how on earth does anyone imagine that Brandis is going to be able to appoint Wilson without attention being paid to his work at the IPA?

The creepy Kerr was desperate enough to call on Michael Gawenda:

Former editor-in-chief of The Age, Michael Gawenda, now with Melbourne University's Centre for Advancing Journalism, cautioned that there was an issue of freedom of speech. 
"I have been concerned how the free speech issue has been hedged, the right to free speech has been hedged with all sorts of caveats that actually diminish free speech," he said. 
Mr Gawenda also cited the Bolt case. "This whole free speech issue in Australia has become part of the culture wars and that's a great pity because it ought not to be," he said.

So now we should pay attention to those deviants and perverts who run Pravda on the Yarra?

Wilson has already been more adept than that, quickly pointing out that the issue under discussion is bigger than the Bolter - in one interview, he even added that he wasn't that worried about the Bolter, who had a substantial platform and well-heeled backers ...

The pity of course is that the question of free speech has become part of the culture wars; the irony is that the Bolter, the Murdoch press, the reptiles at the lizard Oz and the IPA in particular has consistently made free speech and such like issues part of the culture wars.

And they're still doing it. Could there be a more indulgent, self-pitying, pitiful, piteous bleat than the one farted into the ether by the editorialist at the lizard Oz this Thursday morn?

Human rights is the core business of the Abbott government? The mob running Manus Island and Nauru, the mob at war with the Salvation Army and Amnesty International are into human rights?

As opposed to the right of the Murdoch press to behave like squawking, whining, whinging, irresponsible geese?

Geese that go strangely silent, go missing, in defence of all sorts of matters, most notably but not limited to big Bazza going union bashing, Campbell Newman inventing a quasi-fascist state, and Gina Rinehart leaning heavily on the media to muzzle it when it dared to observe the ongoing farce of her family's wondrous legal affairs ...

And then the poor old lizards realised they'd got themselves into a fine old pickle. So perforce they had to liberate themselves:

Great lines:

The IPA is hardly conservative ...

The Australian will always stoutly defend the right of ...

Why, these notions - indeed the whole editorial - are right up there with the use and abuse of the word liberated.

The Australian will always stoutly assault, with vigour, words and thuggish headlines, anyone who disagrees with the Murdochian world view ... and what a narrow, petulant, sulky and skulking world view it is ...

How regressive and repressive, with the icing on the Xmas cake the inclusion of even stray ABC broadcasters.

The trouble of course, is that the paranoid only wake fitfully from their paranoia. The reptiles as stout defenders of free expression? Only if you think the sight of sheep in the paddock baaahing in unison is a form of free expression ...

Which is why there's no sign of a hypocrisy commissioner. The rush of Murdochians to fill the post would keep the hiring and firing pollies busy for years ...

And now, speaking of the stench of double standards, hypocrisy, double-dealing and the Xmas spirit, as usual the pond's favourite cartoonists nail it in one. And also as usual, more Rowe here and more Popery here. Give them a hit to help out the Fairfaxians: