Kevin Rudd's talk fest is another forum for all the social engineers to come to the fore and try to impose more restrictions on us all for problems of their own making.

Why has our society decayed so much in the last 40 yrs?ANS.Soft option left wing philosophies.Now their solutions are to further penalise and restrict the freedoms of the majority rather than making individuals responsible for their own actions.The result is today is that we have enormous incompetent Govts that are consumed by their own inerta.No passion,no plans ,no infrastructure and no direction.

You're a bit wrong there Arjay and should be careful about being so blindly partisan. The right are very, very heavy on moral values and restrictions. The left have been generally open and liberal. However, both sides seem to choose different targets that they would call evil to society and we end up without anything. I would see more consistency across the board.

The new wowserism that is being foisted on us as a consequence of the feminisation of politics has barely begun. The formula is to find something that men do more than women (or boys do more than girls) and demonise it through the media, then use the public attention generated to gain support for laws that proscribe it, or at least to gain funding for a "study" by one of the "pro-feminist" sociologists that infest the outer reaches of academia like cockroaches around a poorly-kept bin.

"Violence by men against women" is seen as practically the same as murder, yet violence by women against men is dismissed as trivial and violence by men against men doesn't even get a mention except as a tool for promoting the demonistion of alcohol and other drugs. In the media coverage of this disgraceful beat up, I've seen lots of images of violence, all of them involving men, yet none at all featuring the drunken, abusive women that are virtually de rigeur at any pub in the suburbs. If women get a mention, it's as victims. We've now even got the prospect of the RSPCA using images of men beating up women with the "justification" that people who deliberately harm animals may also deliberately harm people! No statistics or hard facts about prevalence, of course, just as there are none mentioned in the latest demonisation campaign using alcohol.

The wowserism is fuelled by the christian churches, who have enormous power to bend the ear of politicians and who are dominated by their reliance on a strong female membership and the male partners they bring along. Without those female members, there would be few church functions caried out, let alone handfuls of money when the collection plate is handed around.

The 'new wowserism' is not a left wing invention. For all Howard's talk and fight against political correctness, the last 12 years saw a real erosion of individual rights.

We may see it go even further under a Labor government, but I hope not.

Countryboy: "The 'new wowserism' is not a left wing invention. For all Howard's talk and fight against political correctness, the last 12 years saw a real erosion of individual rights.

We may see it go even further under a Labor government, but I hope not."

You're absolutely right about Howard's term being all about removal of individual rights; my point was that the feminisation agenda has been going on for some time now, not that the Rudd Government is the proximal cause. I doubt that your wish for an abatement under his stewardship will be granted, however. He's in the grip of both the Christian churches (as was Howard) and a very powerfully feminised Union support base, as well as a powerful wife. Men, especially men who are not of the "Christian nerd" persuasion, can anticipate ever-growing strictures and social stigmatisation. As the domestic violence industry loves to tell us, it's all about control. Also as in that case, the intent is for women to have it and men to be under it.

Couldn't have said it better, Antiseptic. Men have many interests and pursuits that women generally find "too much" or "threatening". It is my impression that the political pressures to ban these predominantly male interests mainly come from that quarter. Then they find some allies in the religious on things like censorship and we have overt oppression of one gender and their interests. It's a slow, subtle process, but it's inexorable since they never rest and need to keep the funding of their sexist academia and pursuits. This of course is a generalisation and there are always exceptions, many men for example are feminists and many women do not fit this mould, but I believe it's more or less accurate. The religious are probably as powerful despite our alleged secularism, but we have both a Federal Office for Women and a Minister for the Status of Women. That's unequal democratic representation and the crazy thing is, feminists or these offices will never admit that women are ever equal and label themselves obsolete because that is not really their goal. They are not end their power and funding like responsibly or admit feminism is not required any longer.