Kevin Andrews and boycotts
Former Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and current Minister for Immigration, Kevin Andrews, is a fundamentalist Roman Catholic. He makes no secret of this. He is very big on what he preceives to be “family values ” and he and his wife of more than 30 years have worked as volunteer marriage educators and produced a magazine on behalf of the Catholic Society for Marriage Education. In parliament he is a prominent member of the Lyons Forum, a christian, socially conservative faction within the Federal Coalition.
The Fairfax Press has revealed today that Andrews is is an adviser to a radical right-wing international organisation that advocates economic boycotts to achieve social and political change, the so called Life Decisions International based in Washington, DC. Andrews’ wife Margaret is reportedly “is also on the LDI board”.
Not only is LDI against abortion but they don’t even like contraception all that much. Their particular bete noir is is Planned Parenthood a vocal political advocate of pro-choice positions, comprehensive sex education, and open expression of sexuality which LDI describes as the empire (which seems as a bit paranoid or they spend too much time watching Star Wars movies) .
To further their whacko aims LDI advocate that like minded people boycott anybody who they believe is a supporter of “abortion, sexual promiscuity, physician-assisted suicide, euthanasia, and/or nonconsensual experimentation on human beings“. Included in the boycott are such household names as Disney, global pharma GlaxoSmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, eBay and Four Seasons Hotels. LDI also set their sights on tiny little local businesses like pizza restaurant Brooklyn Pizza in Tucson, Arizona, and hand made confectioners Chocolate Gecko in Albany, NY. How these tiny outfits manage to offend LDI is not stated other than the owners might have trangressed against LDI’s world view at some point.
LDI’s supporters are invited to boycott and picket the businesses on the boycott list and to write what are no doubt repetitive and harrassing letters to the managers and owners of thse businesses.
Minister Andrews, who as we all know is a real stickler for black letter interpretation of the law, refused to be drawn on the virtues of LDI’s boycott policy when interviewed on Insiders. And well he might because politically and ethically inspired business boycotts are a pet peeve of his ministerial colleague, the economic fundamentalist Peter Costello. In February 2007 the PM in waiting (and waiting) mooted changes to the law that would allow the ACCC to take action against groups such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, Greenpeace and of course activists who have campaigned to protect the environment against the depradations of corporate and governmental greed and opportunism.
Of course Kevin Andrews is not the only Catholic Fundamentalist in Federal Parliament. And come July 2008 he will be joined by the recycled dud Jacinta Collins who is currently number 1 on the ALP’s Victorian Senate ticket. Union hackette Collins served as an ALP senator for ten years to 2005 after the accidental death of serving senator Olive Zakharov, a radical activist who must be still spinning in her grave after being replaced by the cossetted conservative, Collins. Collins lost her sinecure when the sleazy preference deal that was supposed to save her bacon that the Victorian ALP hatched with Family First fell in a heap and fundamentalist AoG member Steve Fielding fell over the line with less than 2% of the popular vote in the 2004 election.
Collins’ voting record whilst she was in the Senate would have made the likes of Kevin Andrews proud. Anytime she had a chance to vote against pro choice or stymie leading edge medical research she was there voting with her mates in the Lyons Group. Quite why the ALP persists in pre-selecting these duds whose only aim is to limit our human rights and freedoms is a moot point.
