The Power Index Continues to Err

At Eric Beecher’s alethophobic Power Index, the incompetent Matthew Knott continues to produce erroneous articles.  In “The 10 people behind Labor's gay marriage shift”, he describes Rodney Croome as the man who “fronted the successful campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in Tasmania, which until May 1997 was a criminal offense [sic] punishable by up to 25 years in jail.”

Up until May 1997, when §122 (a) and (c) and §123 were repealed, Sections 122 and 123 of the Tasmanian Criminal Code Act were:

122.  Unnatural crimes
Any person who – 
(a) has sexual intercourse with any person against the order of nature; 
(b) has sexual intercourse with an animal; or 

(c) consents to a male person having sexual intercourse with him or her against the order of nature –

is guilty of a crime.

Charge:  Unnatural sexual intercourse.  [Emphasis added.]

123.  Indecent practices between males

Any male person who, whether in public or private, commits any indecent assault upon, or other act of gross indecency with, another male person, or procures another male person to commit any act of gross indecency with himself or any other male person, is guilty of a crime.

Charge:  Indecent practice between male persons.

Physical acts—such as proctorychan coition, whether between two men or between two women or even between a man and a woman—were, by the old-fashioned law, illegal; but homosexuality itself was not illegal.  Also, according to the Criminal Code, the maximum punishment for any crime was imprisonment for twenty-one years.

UPDATE (5 June, 2012):  AAP and The Herald Sun make a similar silly error; see “I almost banned lesbian sex, Bob Brown says”:

The 67-year-old’s final speech to the National Press Club in Canberra today was littered [sic] with anecdotes about his political career, which ends in 10 days.
The story that got the most laughs related to his time campaigning for gay rights as a Tasmanian MP in the mid-1980s.
Senator Brown said he expected the then opposition Labor party to move to get rid of section 122 of the criminal code, which proscribed male homosexuality – but it didn’t.

Miscellaneous Transcriptions, Nº 3 – the Balance of Power

(from weepyleaps)

Transcript of a conversation in Sen. Brown’s office,
Friday, 1 July, 2011:

Sen. Brown:  Welcome, team, this is the first day of a new, golden age.  Hang on, we’ll just wait for the cameras to leave.  All right, welcome to the new paradigm; now, how shall we begin?

Sen. Milne:  We say, “No pulp mill!”
Dr. Bandt:  We call for an end to bourgeois, left-fascism and deviationism!
Sen. Rhiannon:  Heh-heh heh!  We need to expel from the party those members who reject the conditions and theses laid down by the central committee!  Heh-heh!  Talking of the all-powerful central committee, the leadership—

Sen. Hanson-Young:  Yes, yes, we should have a leadership spill!  I vote for Sarah Hanson-Young and so does my Teddy!

Sen. Rhiannon:  Hark!  I am call’d, my little spirit, see!  Heh-heh!  I vote for Senator Rhiannon!
Dr. Bandt:  I vote for Adam Bandt.  
Sen. Siewert:   I vote for Rachel Siewert.
Sen. Ludlam:  I vote for Senator Ludlum.
Sen. Di Natale:  I vote for me.
Sen. Waters:  I vote for Senator Waters.
Sen. Hanson-Young:  Ooh, I vote for me!
Sen. Wright:  No, me!

Sen. Brown:  Slow down, slow down, everybody.  Christine? 
Sen. Milne:  I vote for Bob.
Sen. Brown:  In that case, I have two votes and remain leader.  Now, assuming that each of you will vote for yourself for deputy—
omnes:  Yes, of course.
Sen. Brown:  I vote for Senator Milne, who thus remains deputy leader.  Right, on with business.  We have the balance of power in the Senate whenever the Government and the Coalition are opposed.  What shall we concentrate our efforts on accomplishing?  What should we announce first?
Sen. Milne:  No coal-fired power stations!
Sen. Siewert:  Ban abattoirs!
Sen. Di Natale:  Make the swinish multitude exercise more!
Sen. Wright:  Tell people what is good for them!  At the moment, the suburbs are full of ignorant racists who eat the wrong food, read the wrong newspapers, watch the wrong television shows—
Sen. Ludlam:  Supporters of nuclear energy must be demonised!  Defame sceptics—
Sen. Waters:  Accuse anyone doubtful of global warming or against taxing the air we breathe of being ignorant, suburban trash in the pay of big oil—
Sen. Milne:  We already do all that—
Dr. Bandt:  Systematic and methodical agitation is necessary throughout the suburbs—
Sen. Rhiannon:  Liver of blaspheming Jew!  First, you loony Leninist, all the party’s publishing institutions must be subordinated to the party leadership—
Dr. Bandt:  Look, you Stalinist hag, an entirely classless, stateless form of society— 
Sen. Rhiannon:  Fair is foul, and foul is fair!  Heh-heh heh!  We must arrange a boycott of all Jewish, I mean, Israeli businesses, and then we must regularly and methodically remove reformists and centrists—
Sen. Hanson-Young:  Please don’t shout!  It makes Teddy nervous. 
Dr. Bandt:  Look, I support Palestinians as much— 
Sen. Rhiannon:  The Jews are responsible—
Sen. Brown:  Umm—

Sen. Hanson-Young:  Oopsie, Teddy did a wee-wee.  Bad Teddy!
Sen. Rhiannon:  You cursed brat!  Look what you’ve done!  I’m melting! melting!
Sen. Brown:  Someone, anyone, Sarah wet herself again; and judging from the smell, Senator Rhiannon needs her nappy changed.
Sen. Rhiannon:  Ah, my pretties!  Heh-heh heh!

Sen. Waters:  Oh, yuck, now she’s playing with it!
Sen. Brown:  Adam, please, their assistants know what to do; take them to their offices, quickly.

Dr. Bandt:  All right.  Come, senators, let’s go toily.
Sen. Hanson-Young:  Is Saint Peter the tutelar saint of Cadiz?
Sen. Rhiannon:  Ah, the devil is come among you, having great wrath.  Heh-heh heh.
Dr. Bandt:  Come on! 

Sen. Brown:  Perhaps, now they’ve gone, we can get some work done.  I was thinking that I should draft a media release for Sarah calling on the Government to alter the powers of the Foreign Investment Review Board to include water licences.  Also, whatever inane thing the PM says, I’ll find a way of turning it into a stick for beating Tony Abbott.

omnes:   Agreed.

Sen. Ludlam:  I shall issue a media release saying the Australian Government has gone weeks without answering questions on when it first knew the full extent of the Fukushima catastrophe.  We must make people think that all nuclear power stations are about to explode any day now.  Our calls for green energy, of course, must not be interpreted in any way as supportive of what is actually non-polluting power.

omnes:   Agreed.

Sen. Milne:  I shall issue a media release saying that we call on the Australian Trade and Industry Alliance to call off its planned advertising campaign against a price on pollution—for the media now compliantly accept our deceptive definition of carbon dioxide as “pollution”—until it is in a position to engage in an “honest and informed debate”.  That will stop them!  Hate media!

omnes:   Hate media!

Sen. Brown:  Excellent!  We’ll get on with that.  Well done, everyone; that was a productive morning’s work.  See you all Monday!

Miscellaneous Transcription, Nº 1

(from weaklylicks)

Transcript of a conversation in Sen. Brown’s office,
Thursday, 16 December, 2010:

Sen. Brown:  So, how do we respond to that bloody Bolt’s call* for Gillard to resign?  Some intimate that we pious and blameless folk† are also somehow at fault.  It’s a slowly unfolding kettle of fish we could be opening up.

Sen. Milne:  We say, “No dams!”

Dr. Bandt:  We say, “It’s too early to say anything!”

Sen. Milne:  We say, “No pulp mill!”

Sen. Hanson-Young:  We say, “It’s time to have teddy bear.”

Sen. Milne:  We say, “Move on!” 

Sen. Brown:  Thank you, Christine.  Nameless advisers? 

Nameless Adviser 1:  We say, “So’s your mamma!”

Sen. Brown:  What? 

Sen. Nameless Adviser 2:  We say, “No, you resign!” 

Omnes:  Yes, yes!

Sen. Brown:  So, we agree that I wittily turn the tables by saying that Bolt should resign? 

Dr. Bandt:  Because he’s naughty. 

Nameless Adviser 1:  And his mamma! 

Sen. Milne:  No dams! 

Sen. Hanson-Young:  I t’ought I was a tapas bar, but I really was a cucumber.

Sen. Brown:  Right.  Thanks, people.  Bolt should resign.  That will set everything right.  Meeting adjourned.

* Following the latest deaths of people attempting to effect an illegal entry into Australia by boat, Andrew Bolt, a newspaper-columnist and blogger, called for the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to resign.  He considers her the person most responsible for her incompetent Government’s ineffective but dangerous immigration policies, which have lured scores, if not hundreds, of people to watery deaths.
†  i.e., The Australian Greens.

UPDATE:  see also “Miscellaneous Transcriptions Nº 3 — the Balance of Power”.