Author: Catherine (Page 38 of 54)

Living Below the Line

May 4, 2014 / Catherine / 0 Comments

When I’m not writing about politics in this blog (or, you know, working full time and studying music part time and singing in more choirs than you can poke a stick at), I also write a food blog, Cate’s Cates.

Normally I wouldn’t mention it here, but this week, I am doing the Live Below The Line challenge, in which participants live for five days on a food budget of $2 per day in order to raise awareness of global poverty, and also to raise money for development projects designed to help people escape poverty. This year, the focus is on education and training programs for young people in East Timor. $2 is considered to be the equivalent of the extreme poverty line in Australia, and after a bit less than a day on this challenge, I can tell you that living on this budget hard work!

Also, I’m really hungry.

Anyway, I’m blogging about food and poverty and my experiences negotiating this rather painful challenge throughout the week, and (perhaps unsurprisingly, given the current budget news), my posts are getting somewhat political.

It occurs to me that these posts might also be of interest to some of my readership over on this side of the blogisphere.

It also occurs to me – because I am a shameless, SHAMELESS person when it comes to fundraising – that some of you might think that this is a sufficiently interesting or worthwhile idea that you might want to sponsor me.

Yep. Shameless. That’s me.

Anyway. The first of my Living Below The Line posts on Cate’s Cates can be found here. There are four posts in the series so far – I’m hoping to post two a day between now and Thursday, and a final one on Friday when the challenge is over.

Already, I’m counting the hours. Did I mention that I’m really hungry?

If you would like to sponsor me, you can do so by visiting this page. Thanks for your support!

Letter to Joe Hockey, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton

April 26, 2014 / Catherine / 3 Comments

Below is a copy of the email I’ve sent to the above three MPs. A slightly modified version will be sent to my Liberal and National State Senators, after which I will probably draft an email for my various non-coalition senators urging them to stand firm against Medicare co-pays. Because once you start writing letters, it’s hard to stop!

It’s far from perfect, and that’s exactly why I’m posting it here – for the benefit of anyone who would like to write something to their MP or Hockey or their Senators about this, but doesn’t know where to start. Feel free to borrow or steal any points that appeal to you.

And remember – letters and emails don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be sent!

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When $6 is more than you think

April 26, 2014 / Catherine / 8 Comments

The government is trying to balance the budget, and since fighter planes are super cool they absolutely have to stay, but Medicare and pensions? Not so much.

(Honestly, it’s really hard for me at the moment to work out which of the government’s policies upsets me most. I suspect that this is a deliberate strategy on their part, in fact – if you create enough policies that rile up the entire left-leaning section of the population, but do them all simultaneously, everyone has to pick their favourite or succumb to exhaustion. It’s divide-and-conquer stuff. And I think it’s pretty disgusting. But I’m sure you had figured that out already.)

Anyway, today I’d like to talk a bit about the idea of getting rid of bulk billing and having a minimum $6 payment to visit the doctor. The reason I’d like to talk about it is that it sounds like such a minor thing – such a fair way to allow everyone to contribute to fixing the alleged budget blowout – but in fact it’s going to affect some of our most vulnerable Australians in a very negative way.

Chronicler

April 13, 2014 / Catherine / 4 Comments

My first degree was in history – medieval history to be precise. My reason for choosing medieval history was straightforward: I have always enjoyed reading primary sources, because of the way languages and customs change but people are still pretty much the same in any given time, and I especially loved the way chroniclers of those times made no attempt whatsoever to be objective. Objectivity wasn’t their job – these chroniclers were there to tell a story and point the moral and tell you who was good and who was bad and who jumped over a fence while chasing pigs and turned from a girl into a boy (I would footnote this if I could, but my degree is nearly twenty years old now – I remember the story, but not the source). They were there to edify as much as to educate.

With the Enlightenment came a perception that history should be factual and objective. A historian, it was felt, should rise above mere opinion and let the facts speak for themselves. The trouble, of course, is that this is virtually impossible to do. In fact, I would say that it’s impossible to record any event or series of events in an unbiased fashion – one’s own interpretations always creep in, and even if reporting strictly on facts, one must, by necessity, select which facts are relevant and which can be omitted. And this, in itself, introduces a certain level of bias. (This goes double if your ‘facts’ come from documents written in other languages – the translator must constantly choose between different ways to translate particular words or phrases, and these choices will reflect the translator’s world as much as the original author’s)

Western Australian Senate Ungrouped Independent ~ Kim Mubarak

April 4, 2014 / Catherine / 4 Comments

And so we come to our final candidate on the Western Australian ballot paper, and just in time, because from tonight, I’m going to be consumed with rehearsals until the big performance this weekend! Actually, by the time you read this, it may well be nearly the weekend, because this post is going to be written in tiny bits as time permits – I apologise in advance for any lack of coherency that may result.

The first thing you should know about Kim Mubarak is that our friends from the Australian Protectionist Party want you to put him dead last on the ballot. Since they want you to put either Teresa Lieshout or Rise Up Australia first on the ballot, I personally view this is a pretty big point in Mr Mubarak’s favour.

Of course, you can guess why they want you to put him last, can’t you? They don’t say why, of course, but after listening to Ms Lieshout’s screed about asylum seekers, I’m pretty sure I can guess. You see, our friend Mubarak is a Muslim man and a former refugee. He is also black, which probably doesn’t help either.

Western Australian Senate Ungrouped Independent ~ Teresa van Lieshout

March 31, 2014 / Catherine / 11 Comments

We now turn to the ungrouped candidates, commencing with Teresa van Lieshout (note that this page connects to a YouTube Channel, as this seems to represent Ms van Lieshout’s most current work). Ms Van Lieshout is running as an independent, but is affiliated with the Australian Protectionist Party (I’m not sure if she is a current member, but they are encouraging their members to vote for her) and the West Australian Party (which seems to be inactive at this point). She was briefly pre-selected as a candidate for the Palmer United Party, but parted ways with them over their stance on refugees, which she viewed as too lax.

Here’s a bit of autobiographical information from one of Ms Van Lieshout’s recent YouTube clips:

I’m an Australian born Christian Teacher, with a Master of Education, 17 years teaching experience, written and published 4 books of non-fiction literature, political candidate, the WA govt. is extorting and stealing what little wealth I have, to make me homeless, or jail me for my political and economic views; since 2008, they’ve wasted millions $$ tax money trying to destroy my life, and my family’s rights, liberal/labor/greens politicians are evil monsters, society must fight to get them out of our parliaments.

The law I follow is the law of the New Testament. We are living in the last days, in the time of the Book of Revelation, political made laws mean nothing and are made by evil corrupt greedy politicians to destroy our rights, interests, and freedoms. Christians will judge the world, so all concerned are in offence against me, the politicians are going to hell for their evil against me, my family, and our society.

Western Australian Senate Group AF ~ Socialist Alliance

March 30, 2014 / Catherine / 1 Comment

Oh, I cannot tell you how pleased I am to find that the Socialist Alliance is running candidates at this election! I missed them on the Victorian Senate ballot last year, I truly did. As a connoisseur of slightly bonkers minor parties, it’s always good to see the Left side of politics truly participating in this game. There are only so many sarcastic things one can say about right-wing parties before it all gets a little same-ish.

Of course, the Socialist Alliance disappointed me a trifle at the 2010 election by actually producing a raft of fairly sensible policies, so it’s always possible that the Left is still lacking that frisson of what-on-earth-am-I-reading-here and please-stop-making-my-side-look-stupid that makes the Senate ballot paper such a delight. But I am not afraid. If the Socialist Alliance becomes too sane, someone else is bound to step up to the bar. And, all humour aside, I actually do like the idea of having several good parties to choose from at the top of my ballot paper. If the Socialist Alliance becomes one of them, all the better.

Let’s start with their voting ticket to see what it tells us. Something tells me we will be seeing Greens, Pirates and perhaps WikiLeaks prominently represented…

Western Australian Senate Group Q ~ Australian Sports Party

March 29, 2014 / Catherine / 0 Comments

I must admit, I’ve been quite looking forward to reading up on the Australian Sports Party, because ever since I heard that they had (possibly) won a Senate seat last year, I couldn’t help but wonder what sort of representation sport truly needed in Australia that it wasn’t already getting? As a nation, we seem obsessed with sports – though, admittedly, more with watching them than playing them.

Then, this morning, before I even had a chance to start looking at my blog for the day, my Facebook feed helpfully presented me with a petition about the Sports Party, which apparently likes to display topless women and make sexist jokes as part of their advertising. Oh dear. While I am, in fact, more disposed to be amused by this than offended by it, I have to admit, it’s pretty sad that a political party in this century could think that this would be a good way to get attention. Do they honestly think this will lead to people taking them seriously? And has it even occurred to them that this sort of advertising implicitly tells women ‘nope, you aren’t the people we are representing. You are – if sufficiently attractive – the prize for the people we are representing’.

Aargh. I’ve been trying not to do feminist rants on this blog, but seriously, Western Australia, some of your tiny political parties have issues.

(Oh, let’s be fair now. Everyone’s tiny political parties have issues, regardless of where they originate. That’s more or less what they are for…).

Anyway, let’s have a gander at who they are sending votes towards with their group voting ticket, shall we?

Western Australian Senate Group M ~ Mutual Party

March 29, 2014 / Catherine / 0 Comments

We now turn to the Mutual Party, which tells me that “Australians are fed up with adversarial politics. It runs against the Australian way of life – informality, give-and take, trust, working together, finding practical solutions. Mutuality.” Further statements talk about the number of Australians involved in mutual organisations, sporting clubs, self-help groups, etc, and exhort Australians to take back their government!

This could go in just about any direction – though as a former volunteer and employee of an umbrella network for self-help / support groups, I do find their premises promising. Let’s start by looking at their voting ticket.

The Mutual Party seems to be part of the little confederation of small parties that are new to me and that are preferencing each other, which I find mildly amusing. Their first few preferences go to the two ungrouped independents, the Sustainable Population Party, and the Freedom and Prosperity Party (oh dear), followed by Australian Voice, Building Australia, the Australian Democrats, and Katter. Rise Up Australia is worryingly high on their list, too. They seem to be leaning mildly to the Right and a bit more definitely towards the libertarian end of the spectrum – several of the lefty libertarian groups are relatively high on their ticket, though I find the juxtaposition of the DLP right before HEMP fairly amusing. Palmer comes in around 40, and Family First makes it into the ticket at 50. On the whole, large parties are not approved by this lot, and they prefer religious parties to parties like the Secular or Sex parties, and shooting parties to Animal Justice or the Greens. The Liberal Party finally makes it onto the ticket at 60, followed immediately by the Nationals, the Socialists, Labor, and the Greens at lucky last. The message I’m getting here is that the major parties are pretty much all alike, but God help us, let’s keep the Reds out for as long as we can.

The Greens being the Reds in this instance, of course.

As they so often are.

Let’s see what luscious and enticing policies the Mutual Party has to offer us…

Western Australia Senate Group I ~ Voluntary Euthanasia Party

March 29, 2014 / Catherine / 4 Comments

Yeah, this is going to be a more serious one.

I’m not sure I know how to write about the Voluntary Euthanasia Party. I feel pretty conflicted about the whole idea of euthanasia, to be honest, and I don’t quite know how I feel about a party that makes this their sole platform. And honestly, it doesn’t really matter how I feel about it at this point, because I’m not the one voting, but it’s quite odd to write about something that I’m really not sure I have a coherent opinion about at all.

The VEP is quite a new party – they seem to have formed in around April 2013, and only contested in a handful of states – and their front page states:

The Voluntary Euthanasia Party was created to provide the choice and dignity that current legislation is denying terminally and incurably ill Australians. The party hopes to provide a clear political outlet for the overwhelming public support for voluntary euthanasia. Over four in five Australians are in favour of new legislation and we wish to allow that sentiment to be clearly demonstrated at the ballot box. The Voluntary Euthanasia Party aims to ensure dignity in the final years of life, by raising the profile of this issue in order to engender the necessary political will for change.

Four in five honestly seems really high to me on this one (they later quote 82% of Australians being in favour of allowing voluntary Euthanasia). I’d love to see where they got their numbers from and what questions were actually asked, because I would think that the combination of conservative religious people and people who are just kind of repelled by the idea would add up to more than 20%, even if you don’t count the terminally confused, such as myself. But perhaps I just haven’t been paying attention to this issue sufficiently.

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OK, I’ve just went to their Facebook Page, followed a link, and spent twenty minutes reading horrifying stories of insufficient palliative care and I’m beginning to get an idea of where these numbers come from. It’s fascinating, though, that an issue with so much community support gets so little time in the media and in politics – and of course, that is one of the things that the VEP is trying to change.