It's Called Context - Rather Than Using Edits To Support Your Political Agenda

TONY JONES: OK, we have another question in the audience that comes from Melissa Rann.

MELISSA RANN: Hi, my question is directed at Bettina. In a media article reporting on your new book, The Sex Diaries...

BETTINA ARNDT: Thank you.

MELISSA RANN: So I did it for you. Yes, they tend to report that you summarise the general advice for women who are experiencing low sex drive to just do it even if they don't feel like it, or don't want to. Doesn't that sound particularly controversial to you, particularly the suggestion that somehow women should force themselves to have sex seems like it's their duty if they want to save their marriage.

BETTINA ARNDT: No, I am not suggesting women lie back and think of England and suffer through it, I'm suggesting that the person with the low sex drive, who is less interested and is constantly rejecting their partner, has an obligation to just do it, to incorporate sex in their loving relationship, and it should be one of the obligations you have in a relationship, and it doesn't matter if it's the man or the woman, but I am not saying it's about suffering, I'm saying often women can in fact, if they put the canoe in the water and start paddling...

(LAUGHTER)

BETTINA ARNDT: ..they will even though they didn't feel like having sex to start off with, they will find that they can enjoy it. That's only one of the things that we've learnt recently through new sex research, that there are many women who don't need desire in order to enjoy sex, so it's a very important I mean, you have to get your head in the right place, and you have to be with the right man who does the right thing, but then you may actually enjoy it and that's a really important thing to leave open as a possibility that your relationship that's what I'm saying, not just to women, but to men.

TONY JONES: Let's hear from another woman, Kate Ellis. Just do it is what Bettina Arndt is suggesting to married women. Good advice, bad advice, what do you think?

KATE ELLIS: Clearly I am not a sex therapist as Bettina is, but I think that you have to be really careful about generalising, and I think that it's different people put the canoe in the water as a result of different circumstances, and there might be, you know, different blockages on the boat ramp I am not sure how long I can go with this for. I think that in relationships, they differ very much from one relationship to another, what's going on, what are the underlying factors, and they need to be explored as an individual relationship, which I am sure Bettina would argue, but I just would be very hesitant to say, "Just do it" and say that it was as simple as that.

TONY JONES: Tony Abbott?

TONY ABBOTT: Well, I am not sure that's what Bettina did say.

KATE ELLIS: I am not suggesting that. That was my question, though.

TONY ABBOTT: Look, this is an extraordinarily difficult area and, you know, I just I'm just trying to write an obituary of Ron Conway the psychologist and social critic who's just died, and Ron said, in his autobiography, that, you know, after thousands and thousands of counselling sessions with people, the two subjects which seemed to most concern people, and I suppose most trouble their psyches are basically sex and god - religion, and intimate relationships, and they carry so much weight, and I think there does need to be give and take on both sides, and this idea that sex is kind of a woman's right to absolutely withhold, just as the idea that sex is a man's right to demand I think they are both they both need to be moderated, so to speak.

TONY JONES: Bruce Wolpe.

BRUCE WOLPE: I think anything that I admire what you do a lot. Anything that helps readdress a balance between love and work - somehow we can't live without work, but we can sometimes live without love for too long is good, but to have a discussion and have people think about the balance in their lives, and how to pursue it better. The Pursuit Of Happiness was a great American revolution, and this is what it's all about.

Hilter Was Not A Conservative

Some people on social media, are very fond of trying to compare Tony Abbott, as a conservative Prime Minister, to Hitler.

The only possible conservative parts would be Hitler's encouragement of allegiance to and pride for your country. Something that appears to be sadly lacking in some quarters within our political establishment on the far left.

Nazism and other Fascist movements in fact borrowed a lot from the Left; they were about mass movements, they were undeniably socialist, most adopted social Darwinism to varying degrees.  All in all they were radical movements that were in no way conservative. Whilst Hitler and his regime 'borrowed' some liberal (meaning our Labor) beliefs it would not be fair to liberals to accuse him of being a total liberal either, at least not in a classical sense.

As for the comparison to Tony Abbott, you may not like what Mr Abbott stands for, that's OK. But to  compare Tony Abbott to Hilter, a man who presided over the murder of millions of Jews is not only unbelievably offensive (insensitive and disrespectful) it's political ideologically wrong.