Category: News

Kerrod Trott, founding Editor and Publisher of the Westender.

I’ve been a Labour supporter man and boy for forty years. I’ve been a financial member of the local branch, and have manned the polling booths for the ALP on many occasions.

Now I just can’t bring myself to vote for them anymore. The ALP have moved so far away from the egalitarian, social democratic values in which I believe, I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t deserve my vote any more.

The latest ‘race to the bottom’ on the issue of refugees was, for me, the straw that broke the camel’s back. While I certainly don’t believe in an open door policy, and feel that the refugees should be considered as part of our overall migration policy, the spectacle of Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbot trying to outdo each other in being tough on asylum seekers left me with a sour taste in my mouth.

What’s wrong with being ‘soft’ on refugees? As Queensland celebrates ‘Multiculturalism Week’, have you ever asked yourself how many of the new Australians who have contributed so much to our society actually arrived here as refugees? The Greeks were fleeing the tyranny of the military junta in the 50’s. Over 100,000 Vietnamese fled here in small boats to escape Communist oppression in the 70’s. Balts, Yugoslavs, Somalians …. the list goes on.

Another major concern is the growing emphasis on American style Presidential politics in some sections of the ALP. Executive power is too important – and potentially dangerous – to be concentrated in one person’s hands, as in the US model. To me, it reeks of an attempt by the global oligarchs to install a candidate of their choosing at the pinnacle of power in Australia.

The concept of a democratically elected Prime Minister is a nonsense. Australia inherited a Parliamentary Democracy from the UK, and it has served us well. The Prime Minister should be answerable to the Parliament, and to the caucus of elected representatives from his party that put him in the job. That’s the way our system works

I’m a secular humanist with a deep commitment to social justice. I support the Trade Union movement, and cherish Unionism’s long history of looking after the rights and conditions of workers. I’ve never been able to bring myself to vote for the Tories.

Sadly, however, there doesn’t seem to be a place for people like me in the ALP of today, which is why you’ll see me handing out How To Vote cards for the Greens on polling day.

A long-term resident of the electorate, Jan McNicol from the Stable Population Party has a wide range of interests in cultural and environmental issues. She said she participated in ‘the noble but failed attempt to protect the Highgate Hill Gully from destruction for high rise in 2002’.  She  watches ‘with horror the spreading densification of this area, as high rises proliferate, local residents lose the right to be consulted about over-development in their streets and neighbourhoods and gardens with trees become concrete boxes’, saying ‘this electorate is an epicentre of growth in a south east Queensland, a high growth area in its own right’.

According to Ms McNicol, population is ‘the everything issue’. She says, ‘A Stable Population will help relieve overstretched infrastructure including hospitals, schools, roads and public transport, ease cost of living pressures including housing, energy, water and transport , and protect our environment including food, water & energy resources, native bushland and animal habitats.’

Ms McNicol considers that ‘Neither Mr Rudd or Mr Newman will tackle population, and therefore neither will help improve our quality of life’. “From a population of 23 million today, under Liberal/Labor policies we are on target for 40 million by 2050 – and rising! We say let’s slow down and stabilise at around 26 million by 2050”.

As to preferences, Ms McNicol says, ‘we have an ‘open ticket’, where we suggest people vote 1 SPP then complete the ballot paper in their preferred order’.

Ms McNicol did not want an image of herself attached to this story because she says;’ I have safety concerns about publishing a photo of myself on the web’.

Many of the minor parties seem to be using the election as a platform for their policies and a way to raise their profile in this division. The rise of single-issue parties may also be a symptom of voter disillusionment with the major parties. It will be interesting to see if this translates into votes for some of them on Election Day.

Sherrilyn Church from Rise Up Australia is not a local – she lives 150 kilometres from Brisbane at Crow’s Nest, where she grows citrus. She is actively involved in a charity in Kenya employing local health workers to provide free health care to the needy.

She says she threw her lot in with the RUA because, ‘we are not politicians, we are ordinary everyday Australians who have left our fireplaces and comfortable retirements like Generals, because the country is at war. The enemy is coming through the back door’.

The war, she says, is ‘with the Islamisation of the planet,’ adding that, ‘It is not the Muslim people themselves I have a problem with, but Sharia law.’

A former member of the Katter Australia Party, Sherrilyn wants to see a good living for dairy farmers, no more live animal trade, and no coal seam gas mining, which she says is destroying underground water and aquifers.

Marriage equality she describes as ‘an attack on the very foundations of Australia. Every child should have a mother and a father’.

Climate Change, according to Sherrilyn, ‘is a big scam’.

‘It was hotter in Middle Ages than it is today. I am totally in agreement with Lord Monckton, who is a brilliant scientist: the planet can handle everything we throw at it if we don’t pull down trees and pollute our rivers’.

‘I’m no scientist,’ she said, ‘but a lot of companies will go out of business if we impose the carbon tax on them.’

Church is pleased to have the number one position on the ballot paper and thinks this will bode well for her. She said the party deliberated carefully and gave their first preference to Family First and second to the LNP.

Anne Reid of the Secular Party is an accountant who works in the Griffith suburb of West End, and lives just outside the electorate in nearby Yeronga.

Anne Reid – Secular Party

Since being out on the campaign trail, she has discovered that ‘secular’ is a poorly understood term. Essentially, she says, the SP stands for three things: ‘The separation of church and state to ensure government spending is not influenced by religion, the protection of human rights from religious indoctrination, and impartiality towards religion’.

Reid explains her last point, as: ‘not discriminating either against or in favour or religions.’

It is as an accountant that Reid says she is most outraged by the way the tax system privileges religions, citing that: ‘Australia is one of only three countries that exempts both religions and their businesses from paying taxes’. The others are Hungary and Israel.

She said the Catholic Church alone ‘has assets of $100 billon and is the biggest employer in Australia, but does not pay payroll tax’, adding that the SP estimates $31 billion per year is being lost to Government revenue because of tax breaks for religious organisations.

According to Reid, in the last census, 35.3 percent of people in the Griffith suburb of West End and 35.9 percent in Highgate Hill said they had no religious affiliation, and the SP therefore hopes to do well in this electorate.

While closely allied with the Democrats, which it will preference in the Senate ballot, the SP will preference the Greens first in the House of Representatives.

Liam Flenady of the Socialist Alliance routinely attends rallies in support of community campaigns such as marriage equality, rights for asylum seekers, single parents and action on climate change.

When he is not out on the hustings he is a PhD student in composition at the Queensland Conservatorium. He says he keeps his art and his politics separate, but the demands of both are significant.

According to Flenady, the Campbell Newman government has decimated the Arts budget in Queensland, in what he says is a mostly ‘symbolic response to so-called cultural elites’, and he says we can expect the same under an Abbott Government.

He says it is a ‘clever ploy’ to label those in the Arts as elites, when the real elites ‘are people like Gina Rinehart, Clive Palmer and the banks: they’re the economic and political elites who do the real harm to working people’.

As a socialist, Liam says his motivation in this election is to establish a profile and to link up with other activities groups and social movements. “Through people who are already active we can reach broader audiences, and we want to support those campaigns, especially the refugee campaign, because ordinary Australians are being so conned”.

People think, he said, that politics takes place in the parliament, but “we feel it takes place more in the streets; more in workers’ struggles and social campaigns”, “but the media tells us politics takes place in parliament and is about voting, and so we have to engage on that level”.

Liam said the majority of the eleven parties standing in Griffith are right wing, “it is a worry to see this rise of micro-right parties whose preference will inevitably go to the LNP”.

Socialist Alliance will preference the Greens in Griffith, and it encourages people to vote for the Greens in electorates where they do not have candidates standing.

Karin Hunter of the Palmer United Party is a local teacher and businesswoman. ‘I have found Clive Palmer to be refreshingly honest and upfront, and a great advocate for the pensioners, veterans, sick, and the community,’ she said, before explaining the five ways her party differs from the LNP.

The PUP would repeal the carbon tax and refund all payments made to date; they would ban lobbyists from having a role in political parties; they would support the development of mineral processing within Australia, to ‘create jobs, build export revenue and a stronger balance of payments’; they would direct wealth generated in the regions back into those regions; and they would create a more humane response to asylum seekers.

The Greens have recently announced that they will preference the PUP in some seats because of the last of these policies.

Hunter says the PUP believes it would be cheaper and more humane to fly refugees to Australia and process them on arrival, providing they have a valid passport. ‘The PUP would abolish detention centres and keep families together’, adding, ‘we should recognise they have legitimate rights”.

According to her, people are responding well to the more positive message of the PUP and they have had 3 million hits on their website. The party has struck a deal with the KAP and will preference them second.