Chisholm MP Gladys Liu promotes Christian-only services complicit in negative mental health outcomes in mental health address

On Wednesday June 10 2020 Liberal Party Member for Chisholm Glady Liu MP spoke in Parliament about how mental health services and suicide prevention were a priority for the government.

She also took the unashamed liberty to promote five Christian services and churches in her electorate, whilst overlooking any non-Christian or secular services.

The coalition government is doing its bit in this space, but I cannot let go by an opportunity to speak about the excellent work of some organisations in my electorate of Chisholm who are doing the hard work to assist those in need. Organisations such as St Vincent de Paul, the Salvation Army, Crossway Baptist Church, NewHope Baptist Church and UnitingCare East Burwood Centre provide numerous services to people struggling through these times, and I’m proud to work with these great organisations to ensure that everyone in Chisholm is able to get the help they need.

PRIVATE MEMBERS’ BUSINESS: COVID-19: Mental Health

Without too much effort I located one non-faith based mental health referral service operating within her electorate in Box Hill: Eastern Melbourne PHN. There may well be more such services. I’m sure her staffers are sufficiently capable of researching this.

Whilst it’s disappointing that my elected representative is exclusively promoting Christianity, it doesn’t entirely surprise me given her conservative religious values.

The devastating part of what Gladys Liu has done here is promote a range of services, some of which are complicit in extreme negative mental health outcomes for segments of the community, most specifically LGBTIQ+ people.

I have taken the opportunity to send a message to Gladys Liu advising her of Eastern Melbourne PHN and asking that she prepare a comprehensive list of mental health services in Chisholm that extend beyond Christian churches or church-based services.

Hopefully next time Gladys Liu is reporting on services in Chisholm, she remembers her responsibilities to her electorate do not include advantaging religion. With any luck her speech might even not backfire on her.

If you know of a non-Christian and/or non-faith based mental health service in Chisholm, let me know.

20200610-Gladys-Liu-Hansard-fragment

Remember to ask for any outstanding phone prepayment to be refunded when closing your TPG ADSL account

For many years I had a landline phone on my home TPG ADSL account. The phone never really got used all that much but I had decided it was important to keep going. I knew that each call on it would cost me, because from memory I had been charged an up-front credit for phone calls when I opened my account in October 2009.

In transitioning from ADSL to NBN I changed service provider. After I had contracted the new service provider and had my NBN installed I cancelled my TPG ADSL account online. Shortly after doing this I had a call from TPG to find out if there was anything they could do to keep my business. I explained this would not be possible as I was already on the NBN with another service provider.

As it was I had to pay out another month with TPG, as their terms advised they needed 30 days notice, or something to that effect. So be it.

That was all back in August 2019.

On April 23 my bank cancelled and reissued my VISA card as they had detected some overseas fraudulent activity on it. When the new card arrived I went through the rigmarole of updating the new card number on all my accounts. I keep a handy list of these places online for such joyous occasions. As it happened, my TPG account was still on the list.

I tried logging into the TPG portal and lo, I was still able to get in. I wanted to see if they had a stored payment method on file. It turned out their portal doesn’t show any current payment method details on their Update Contact & Payment Details page. It just allows you to provide updated details.

While I was in the portal I checked though my Account Statement Current Financial Year and noticed this line entry at the end of the statement:

I didn’t recall getting my home phone credit refunded so checked my bank account and saw there were no deposits of $20.54 around that period.

I called TPG and asked them if this credit had been refunded to me. They said they had no record it had been refunded but would look into it. They then sent me an email asking for my bank account details and advised the funds should arrive within 3-5 business days.

The funds turned up as promised:

In summary, if you have a home phone attached to your TPG ADSL account and you cancel the account, make sure you ask for any credit on the account to be refunded.

Lyle Shelton praises Europeans for stopping “black-on-black” violence in Australia

According to Lyle Shelton, indigenous Australians should be grateful for the European invasion stopping them from killing each other.

“Thank goodness that the Europeans came and the black-on-black violence, which was limiting their population growth, stopped.”

Lyle Shelton; May 2 2020

Caulfield Synagogue Vice President Robert Weil derides Jewish Care’s support for LGBTIQ+ people

Robert Weil spits the dummy again because he doesn’t believe in diversity and treating people with respect.

Much like a child having its favourite dummy taken away from it, serial anti-homosexualist and Vice President of Caulfield Synagogue Robert Weil has doubled down and taken aim at Jewish Care Victoria for their strong support of LGBTIQ+ people:

Seems Jewish Care is also infected with the political correctness virus and virtue signalling and the ‘rainbow tick’ are now it’s proudest achievements.

J-Wire: “Marching with Pride”; February 8 2020

At this rate there will be few aged care facilities who will want Robert Weil on their premises knowing how threatened and hostile he becomes in the presence of LGBTIQ+ staff and residents.

Caulfield Synagogue Vice President Robert Weil wants gays who are taught to loathe themselves to be able to pray their gay away

The law to ban conversion therapy in Victoria has not yet passed, yet serial anti-homosexualist and Vice President of Caulfield Synagogue Robert Weil is prematurely spewing confected outrage over the issue of people with “unwanted homosexuality” being denied the right to pray their gay away:

I’m not aware of any of the affiliates of the JCCV being consulted on this matter. Again, it’s just virtue signalling by the JCCV and Jewish Care. While falling over themselves to pander to homosexuals, they ignore the hate and insults being leveled at people of faith who wish to preserve religious freedoms and values. Without entering the debate about homosexuals being ‘born that way’, which, in many cases, is probably true, the fact remains that those who are uncomfortable with their position and wish to inquire about or discuss available options are now prohibited from doing so by this draconian ban.

J-Wire: “Jewish Care Victoria and JCCV partner to support ban of LGBTQ+ conversion therapy”; December 15 2019

It’s not surprising vulnerable gay people would want to rid themselves of their homosexuality (or their life) when they encounter the type of rabid mouth-foaming attitudes that tell them they’re broken and sinful.

ABC: Stop misrepresenting Martine Delaney’s complaint about the Tasmanian Catholic Church and Archbishop Julian Porteous

Between August 29 and September 4 2019 the ABC broadcast one misrepresentation and two unchallenged assertions about the complaint Martine Delaney’ lodged (and subsequently withdrew) about the Tasmanian Catholic Church and Archbishop Julian Porteous.

Martine Delaney’s complaint had nothing to do with preaching “church doctrine” and everything to do with the church claiming same-sex couples couldn’t be whole, healthy, raise healthy children, and were “messing with kids”.

The complaint is described here:

The Church argued that since every child had a biological mother and father, messing with marriage was “messing with kids”.

In Tasmania, it went out to churches and was sent home in sealed envelopes with children at Catholic schools.

Ms Delaney said the language used in the booklet that “messing with marriage is messing with kids”, implied criminal activity.

“In Australian society ‘messing with kids’ is generally used right across the country as virtually code for sexual abuse or paedophilia,” she said.

Anti-discrimination complaint ‘an attempt to silence’ the Church over same-sex marriage, Hobart Archbishop says (ABC News; Sep 28 2015)

and also here:

“A complaint was brought to the commissioner by Ms Delaney, who objected to the Tasmanian Catholic Church which had printed a pamphlet stating that same-sex parents ‘mess with kids’ and that same-sex partners were not ‘whole people’. ‘Messing with kids’ has a connotation that is extremely disturbing and alludes to practices which are a subject of the royal commission into institutionalised child abuse, a practice which up until very recently had been hidden deeply within some church-run facilities, widely throughout Australia”

Andrea DAWKINS (MP for Bass)
22 September 2016 at 4:48pm
Tasmanian House of Assembly Hansard [PDF]

Amongst everything else, it’s particularly disappointing the nation’s highest lawyer, the Attorney-General for Australia, can’t even get the facts right.

My transcripts of the relevant sections from the media are below.

Christian Porter

“Well, um, the archbishop, the Catholic archbishop of Tasmania Mr Porteous went through something you know quite awful I think, he distributed a pamphlet, which was distributed widely across Australia, um, devised and drafted by the Catholic Church which did little more than put the Catholic Church’s view about the virtues of the traditional definition of marriage, and he was the subject of a complaint under a very very broad section of the Tasmanian Discrimination Act.”

ABC RN Drive – Thursday 29 August 2019 – 6:06pm
Federal Government unveils religious discrimination legislation
Section: 6:08 – 6:39

Gerard Henderson

“I’ve looked at the Bill and I’ve looked at the minister’s, the Attorney-General’s speech. And it is a draft bill. So I think it’s, it’s in a pretty good position at the moment. There will be opposition from both sides. But I think it does cover two issues.  The Israel Folau issue and the Archbishop Porteous issue in Hobart. Now the Catholic Archbishop of Hobart put out a statement just stating Catholic position on marriage. [indistinct] actimist took him to a discrimination thing that caused… a discrimination commission in Tasmania that caused a huge issue…”

ABC Insiders – Sunday September 1 2019
Section: 44:57 – 45:08

Andrew West

“So those incidents that you’re talking about Renae, the most prominent of those included a Catholic bishop in Tasmania who was brought before an anti-discrimination commission because he published a church doctrine on family and marriage that some objected to…”

ABC Religion & Ethics Report
“Religious freedom for religious minorities”
Wednesday September 4 2019
Section: 2:20 – 2:35

How I worked out why I wasn’t receiving the confirmation email when changing the email address on a Twitter account

In trying to change the email address on a Twitter account I was not receiving the confirmation email from Twitter containing the link to validate the change of email address.

After much frustration, and with no luck with using Twitter’s help system, I gave up completely.

Separately, and some time later, someone told me an email they sent me had bounced. I knew the email address was working because I was getting emails from other people addressed to it. I should note that the email address was one that belonged to a domain I manage.

This is the error message they received (which I’ve anonymised):

mailto:user@domain.name
   all relevant MX records point to non-existent hosts or (invalidly) to IP addresses
Reporting-MTA: dns; se3-syd.hostedmail.net.au <http://se3-syd.hostedmail.net.au/>
Action: failed
Final-Recipient: rfc822;mailto:user@domain.name
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; It appears that the DNS operator for domain.name <http://domain.name/> has installed an invalid MX record with an IP address instead of a domain name on the right hand side.

This got me thinking, and made me suspect that it was possible the Twitter verification email was bouncing for the same reason.

I changed the DNS setting for my domain name, replacing the IP address for the MX record with the hostname of the mail server.

I then went to my Twitter profile, requested the confirmation email again, and can report that it promptly arrived, much to my delight.

Ultimately it would be helpful if Twitter’s email verification mechanism reported errors when its verification emails bounce (for whatever reason), rather than doing nothing.