Bugga! Just when we don’t need to expect the Spanish Inquisition, out pops its wolf-in-sheep’s clothing remake: Opus Dei. New Premier, Dominic Perrottet is closely affiliated with this extreme, conservative, secretive and politically influential, Catholic organisation.
Perrottet’s early statement that freedom is innate to us all and not a gift of government sounded promising. That implies we have inalienable rights, beyond the prerogative of government to deny, to exercise choices for our own lives, provided they do not trespass on the rights of others. Perrottet’s record shows the opposite. He opposed the decriminalisation of abortion, and marriage equality and intends to oppose voluntary euthanasia. As Premier, Perrottet will have more than his one vote to influence ‘conscience votes’ by Liberal MPs.
This is typical of right-wing sleight of hand. It resonates with the Taliban’s proclamations that women have rights – within the misogynistic prison of Sharia law!
The following paraphrases Wikipedia: Opus Dei supported repressive, right-wing regimes including Franco and Pinochet. Franco’s regime included Opus Dei members, and its founder, Josemaria Escriva, wrote to Franco rejoicing ‘as a priest and Spaniard that Spain’s Head of State should proclaim that Spain accepts the law of God according to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church, a faith which will inspire its legislation’.
According to Opus Dei whistleblower and former priest, Vladimir Felzmann, Escriva remarked that ‘Hitler had been “badly treated” by the world’ and he further declared that ‘Hitler couldn’t have been such a bad person. He couldn’t have killed six million (Jews). It couldn’t have been more than four million’.
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
