Bastards are still being kept honest, thanks

Democrats Senate candidate Jeanie Walker writes: Re. “Bell tolls for the Democrats: bastards got the better of them?” (Friday). As the lead Senate candidate in South Australia, I really do wonder why all this internal conflict is said to be occurring.

The Democrats are still here and we are still keeping the bastards honest.

Internal conflict is a natural part of the political process and we encourage democratic processes in the Dems.

The elected national president was unable to continue in his position due to personal reasons and we respect that. Darren Churchill has continued as senior deputy and was president last year so has the experience to lead the party in the interim while ballots are completed.

Any attempt to undermine the party is childish and poorly thought out — the members are loyal and more than capable of voting.

If another faction has truly “broken out” then that is their concern. The majority of us are only concerned with political issues and not distractions.

We will return as the third force in Australian politics because we truly care about the Australian people. When that happens will of course be up to the Australian media …

Misogyny writ large

Keith Binns writes: If besti-lity is gay marriage writ large, as Cory Bernardi has alleged, then the shooting of the young lass by the Taliban is the anti-women policies of many churches and misogyny writ large. We don’t know where gay marriage will lead. We do know where misogyny leads. We’ve just had a clear demonstration. We already know where anti-gay policies in general lead, as Uganda has clearly shown: wanting to execute gay men. You judge ideas not just by the ideas themselves but the company they keep.

Hurt about all the corrections

Ben Lohberger writes: Without wanting to start a corrections frenzy, like Adam Perrett (comments, Friday) I also thought there was something odd about John Richardson’s (comments, Thursday) reference to the Trent Reznor/Johnny Cash masterpiece Hurt. Unlike Adam Perrett , I didn’t notice that it was incorrectly attributed to Cash, but I did notice that Mr Richardson got the lyrics wrong — it’s “I wear this crown of thorns,” rather than “crown of sh*t” as Richardson asserts.

I think we’ve mined that one for all it’s worth now.