Talk:Ted Lapkin

I have amended the posting relating to Ted Lapkin to excise the reference to AIJAC as "right wing." On questions of Middle East policy, AIJAC is unabashedly Zionist, a position that reflects a wide consensus within the mainstream Australian Jewish community.

But even more importantly, support for Israel is not a "right wing" position within Australian federal politics. There is widespread pro-Israel sentiment on both sides of the partisan aisle in parliament, and the ALP's Kim Beasely is just as supportive of the AIJAC foreign policy agenda as is Prime Minister Howard.

AIJAC's board of directors includes members of both the ALP and the Libs, and the organization works on a bi-partisan basis on both foreign and domestic issues. Therefore unless you are going to argue that the Australian Labour Party is a conservative body, the characterisation of AIJAC as "right wing" is misleading and intellectually dishonest.

-- Is that you Ted? If so, it is best to identify yourself when editing your own page. As for whether AIJAC is right wing or not, I'm ambivalent about whether such a tag is crucial for a personal profile page, at least at this stage. Better to let readers judge the documented views of AIJAC/Lapkin. But just because AIJAC's claims it is bipartisan doesn't mean it isn't 'right wing'. Nor does the involvement of ALP people (and I suspect that representation is skewed towards one end of the spectrum of views within the ALP) necessarily mean a description of AIJAC as 'right wing' is inaccurate. It is pretty easy to argue that the ALP is conservative on many issues.--Bob Burton 17:46, 4 Mar 2006 (EST)