MP opens up the floor

MP opens up the floor

Prahran MP Clem Newton-Brown is inviting residents of his electorate to a community forum this month to coincide with the anniversary of the 2010 state election.

Newton-Brown said he organised the forum as another way for local residents to speak to him about the work of the state Government.

The Liberal MLA faced criticism from the LGBTI community this year after controversially voting in favour of the Government’s Equal Opportunity Amendment Bill, which made it easier for religious organisations to discriminate against gay, lesbian and transgender people.

Weeks later, he pushed for more funding for the Safe Schools Coalition Victoria in future state budgets and met with key community representatives to discuss expanding the program’s funding to extend its reach.

The forum will be held on November 28 from 6pm at the Melbourne Bowling Club in Windsor.

Newton-Brown encouraged anyone who is unable to attend the forum to contact him.

INFO: www.clemnewtonbrown.com

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8 responses to “MP opens up the floor”

  1. Private schools teach a certain way of life and therefore should be able to employ whomever they want. I may not agree with the teachings of a Catholic school for instance, but I’m not offended if that means they’re not interested in employing me as a gay man.

    It’s so easy to run the ‘discrimination’ and ‘homophobia’ lines, but Clem has been a great friend of the GLBTI community and is working very hard for Prahran.

  2. The Citizens of Prahran should be ashamed of Clem. He and his party is nothing but bad news for the Queer residents of Victoria. Not only did the Liberal Party vote to wind back the clock on Equal Opportunity legislation making it Legal for a wide range of organisations to discriminate against GLBTI persons. But he also has failed to stand up for the GLBTI Ministerial Advisory Committees with the Health Minister and Attorney-General, meaning that the GLBTI community has no voice in the government’s Health and Law decisions. The current Liberal Attorney-General has said that “being gay is akin to having spina bifida” Make no mistake The Liberal Party has no interest in supporting our community and neither does Clem. If Clem had any integrity and had any actual interest in the GLBTI community he would stand up to the bigoted and homophobic Members and Minister in his Party. Clem may make fine speeches and hand out glossy brochures proclaiming his parties ‘wonderful’ work on Chapel Street but the important thing is how does he vote on Spring Street. Unfortunately that track record isn’t good.

  3. Further, I understood Clem guarenteed support for the GLBTI Ministerial Advisory Commitees to the Health minister and Attorney-General to remain under an L/NP government. A year on, we’re still waiting, waiting…

  4. This MP is a joke. We won’t forget you rolling back our Equal Opportunity rights at the next election Clem!! Only places like Zimbabwe have gone backwards in rights. Don’t think you can placate us by extending funding to an already existing Govt program in Safer Schools.. And what do you think about your mate Abbott not allowing his MP’s a free vote on marriage? The Libs are nowhere on this. Time to start standing up for our community.

  5. If Clem believed in listening to our community then he would have done so when we asked him to vote against the changes to the equal opportunity laws. It only would have taken one MP to cross the floor to stop the government making it easier to discriminate against GLBTI people. He should be ashamed!

  6. It was just two metres that ended the promising career of Clem Newton-Brown. He left us dead on the road side having been bashed to death by the Liberal/National party. He voted to strip our protections in the Sate Equal Opportunity Act, making our birth a punishment, and excluding us from thousands of Government funded jobs. Clem thinks we are not even good enough to work in many soup kitchens, let alone help homeless people, or people with a disability. There are thousands of jobs we were simply banned from, as Clem could not walk to metres and cross the floor for us. When it mattered, he simply drove off leaving us dead in a gutter.

    When politicians carry out acts of hate, they deserve the punishment of their electorate. Clem Newton-Brown has taken money from us for his Ipad, his mortgage, his shopping and car. We have put his food on his table for his family. If we are good enough to pay for all these things for him, surely he should honour us by treating us the same as other people, not making our birth a punishment. But instead Clem chose to single out GLBTI people. You work study hard, have the experience, but still not get the job. Clem has been an economic vandal making people get jobs not on ability or experience, but your religion.

    Simon Overland, the former Police Commissioner who marched in Pride, was run out of his job by the Liberal/National Party. Not because of his ability, but because he showed open support for our community. The OPI investigation found the Deputy Premier, Peter Ryan, and the secretary to the Police Minister, Bill Tilley, had very different evidence. One was not truthful, one was?

    The Liberal/National Party is of course, led on all these matters, by one Robert Clarke, a bloke who has been a career politician and proud homophobe.

    In 1995, the current Liberal Party Attorney-General Robert Clarke said of homosexuality to parliament, “I believe homosexual practices form a destructive way of life, destructive to the individual and destructive also to other individuals who are brought into that way of life. I suppose it is most readily demonstrable at a physical level; it is a physical fact that the human body is not designed for many homosexual practices and it is clear that physical problems follow from those practices.” Mr Clark went on to quote a student medical text stating that homosexual male paedophiles commonly reported molesting hundreds of victims, while heterosexual paedophiles “molest only a few”. (Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/libs-take-dim-view-of-homosexuals/2005/11/26/1132966006762.html

    Of course now Clem Newton-Brown is desperate to be seen as GLBTI friendly, but when it really counted, he simply could not give a fuck, and drove the knife in hard.

  7. It is a Conservative! Why bother? They don’t listen and don’t want to! You cannot remove set concrete between the ears can you?