Politics, Poetry and Reviews

Tag: federal politics (Page 3 of 6)

And here is something you can do right now

According to Amnesty International, a Bill is being debated right now that will make significant changes to the assessment process for asylum seekers.  And these changes are not good ones.  I especially like the part where the bill “calls for a number of provisions in the UN Refugee Convention – to which Australia is party – to be removed from the Migration Act.”

Not unexpectedly, number one on the Exciting List of Mean Things To Do To Refugees (yes, that’s flippant, but honestly, it’s flippancy or despair right now) is the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas, which puts people in a horrible position where their refugee status is reassessed every three years, with the threat of deportation at the end of each three year period if they are no longer deemed to be at risk.

Given how very bad our government has been at assessing risk to asylum seekers, both within our system and in terms of deporting people back to their countries of origin where they are trapped in war zoneskilled,disappeared‘, or otherwise persecutedexactly as they told us they would be, this is a pretty frightening thought.  Bad enough to have to go through this harrowing process once, but to have to roll the dice for your life every three years seems cruel and unusual – and not conducive to mental health.

Let’s be clear – a temporary protection visa tells people: “You are not one of us.  You are not welcome.”  It says “Don’t get too comfortable here.”  On a practical level, it also says “Don’t bring your family, and don’t go home to visit them,” which is another cruelty designed to make people give up.

These are all, quite frankly, terrible things to do to people who have already suffered from persecution in their home countries.

But it’s also a pretty terrible thing to do to Australia.  Setting aside the burden on our collective conscience – which I think is immense – the temporary protection visa weakens us as a country.  Whether you take the protectionist view that people who come here from other cultures need to assimilate, or the multiculturalist view that people who come here from other cultures enrich us, the temporary protection visa undermines this, because the other thing this visa tells people is: “You have no stake in this country.”

If we are serious about being worried about terrorism, this is a really stupid thing to do.  And if we just want to be decent human beings, it’s a deeply unkind thing to do.

Either way, we need to stop doing it.

The High Court of Australia recently ruled that we could not prevent people from applying for permanent protection.  I’m guessing that the new Bill is designed to counter this.

So.  Here’s what we can do today.

Amnesty International is encouraging you to call your Senator today, and provides some scripts you can use to do so.  You can find a list of Senators for your state here – click on the map to find the ones for your state.

This is horribly intimidating, I know.  Frankly, I always feel as though I sound like a complete idiot when I ring a politician, so I’ll probably use Amnesty’s script, or something very like it.  And still sound like a complete idiot.

You can also send emails or letters, which is a bit less scary.  I’m going to try to draft something over the weekend and post it here, just in case that is useful to anyone.

If you are more of a rally sort of person, there is also a Walk for Refugees coming up on October 25th in a city near you.

If you’d rather run than walk, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre has a Run for Refugees fundraiser coming up in conjunction with the Melbourne Marathon.

If, on the other hand, you prefer to sit, Love Makes A Way is an ecumenical Christian organisation that does training in non-violent direct action and does sit-ins at the offices of politicians.  (They definitely have non-Christians involved in the sit-ins – I’ve spotted at least one Rabbi in photos – but I suspect you’d need to be pretty comfortable with prayer to participate, regardless of your affiliation.)

And if you know about any other actions that can be taken on this, please let me know, and I’ll add them to the list.

Now, I’m off to spend the rest of my lunchbreak ringing a Senator.  Wish me luck!

PS – another item on this bill is the new Fast Track Processing, which sounds really great on the surface, but tends to greatly disadvantage people who have been traumatised by torture or sexual violence if they are unable to talk about this immediately (essentially because there’s no real time to build any sort of rapport with the interviewer, and these sorts of things can be incredibly difficult to talk about and tend to be revealed over a longer period of time).  And of course ‘greatly disadvantage’ can mean getting deported when they really are at risk.

Edited to update: I have now rung six senators – Senators Di Natale (Greens), Conroy (Labor), Muir (Motoring Lobby), McKenzie (Nationals) Madigan (Independent) and Fifield (Liberal).  In that order, I might add, because I figured that I’d leave the scary ones and the ones who might actually be on the fence until last.  So the Greens were basically my practice run, because I find this terribly intimidating, but I pretty much know which way the Greens will vote, so there’s no way that phone call can go badly! My script was similar to the one from Amnesty – though when I was speaking to the Coalition offices, I expressed my awareness that this was Coalition policy, but that I wanted to let the Senators know that I was against it.  I also mentioned my concerns that TPVs are counterproductive if we are seriously concerned about terrorism, because they don’t give people a stake in our community.

Everyone I spoke to was very friendly and helpful, especially the woman from Senator McKenzie’s office (who took notes while I was speaking – and when I apologised for speaking fast, because I was nervous, said that they always want to hear from people and know what they think about what the government is doing, and I shouldn’t worry, which was kind of her), and the man from Madigan’s office (who seemed struck by my argument about terrorism, which he said wasn’t one he had considered, and also informed me that Madigan was absolutely against TPVs, which was good to hear).  I left a message on Senator Muir’s voicemail, which I suspect was pretty much the only phonecall where I managed to sound like a grownup.

But, intimidating as it was, it has been done, and hopefully it will have some weight.  I was heartened by the fact that even the Coalition offices made an effort to be approachable and were clearly taking notes. 

(I still prefer letters, though.  It’s so much easier not to sound like a twit in a letter.)

Sample letters – and some replies

I’m taking a break from being a walking, talking, one-woman letter-writing campaign to post a few sample letters for people who are completely stuck.  A big part of this exercise is once again to show you that you don’t have to write something brilliant, so long as you write something and send it.  Because I really don’t know how good these letters are (it’s hard to produce a quality product in bulk!).

Good or bad, they are getting replies.

Canned replies from Labor, mostly, which is a bit disappointing, but not surprising.  I suspect that the ALP is hearing from quite a lot of people right now, and the precise content is probably less important than being able to scan the letter and putting it in the ‘for’ or ‘against’ pile.  (Please bear in mind, I have absolutely no knowledge of the inner workings of political parties – I’m just basing this on the fact that I am getting very standardised ‘your call is important to us and will be answered by the next available operator’  sorts of letters.)  Though it wouldn’t surprise me to that they have some sort of spreadsheet where they tick off what particular issues were raised in the letter so that they can get some idea of which particular bits of the budget are causing the most conniptions.  It’s what I’d do if I were them, frankly.

(Actually, if I were them and I were very clever, I might even keep a file of people who were interested in particular issues and contact them when I was campaigning or doing something about a particular issue and wanted either donations or a show of public support.  Tailored marketing, in fact.  On second thoughts, I think I’m glad they don’t seem to be that clever yet.)

The Greens are sending me very sweet emails thanking me for my support, and earnestly assuring me that they will keep fighting the good fight.  I liked the one who suggested that I could follow the Greens on Facebook, and in the same breath added ‘but you are probably doing that already’.  No flies on her…  In general, though, I’m getting the impression that these particular emails are being read by actual people and replied to briefly but personally.  Incidentally, I also get the sense that very few people ever contact politicians thanking them for what they are currently doing or saying and encouraging them to keep doing it.  There is a tone of astonished delight in these responses that is quite unmistakeable.  It’s quite fun. (And then you get added to their mailing lists FOREVER.)

Palmer United seemed incredibly excited to hear from me.  Something tells me that they don’t get many letters.  They also clearly decided that I am a good letter-writing sort of soul, and thus encouraged me to share my views with my local MP and my newspaper.  And to join the Palmer United Party.  I reckon the letter was about half form letter and half not.

Oh, and I’ve got a reply from Joe Hockey’s office from my last round of letters about Medicare.  He is aware of the concerns of the community and appreciates that I have taken the time to write to him.  It’s so nice to know that he cares…

On to the letters!

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Poverty, Unemployment and the Budget

I don’t think it will come as a surprise to anyone reading this that I am horrified by the proposed budget.

Horrified doesn’t really cover it, actually.  I feel quite literally sick to my stomach at the thought of it.  It makes me want to cry.

There is so much not to like about it that it’s hard to know where to start, but the part I want to focus on today is the changes to unemployment benefits for people under thirty. The reason I want to focus on these changes is because I don’t see any way that it won’t result in people becoming homeless and possibly starving.

Under the new rules, if you are under thirty and become unemployed, you will receive no benefits whatsoever for six months.  During this time, you will be expected, during these six months, to participate in government-funded job search and employment services activities, whatever these are.  (I wonder how they expect people to get to these?  Neither petrol nor tram tickets are free.  Are they going to provide free public transport to job seekers?) After that, you get six months on the pension – which, if you are under 24, will now be substantially lower – during which time you must also work for the dole for 25 hours a week.  And if that doesn’t work, you are back to nothing.

The government says that this is about getting young people to ‘earn or learn’.  Setting aside the fact that they have just deregulated university fees and de-funded most forms of research that aren’t medical research (and hey, I work in the industry, I’m very happy that medical research didn’t get cut, but I do think there are other areas of research that are just as important), a combination that is likely to raise university fees to unaffordable levels, there are a number of problems with this approach.

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Letter to Joe Hockey, Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton

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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Western Australian Senate Ungrouped Independent ~ Kim Mubarak

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.

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Western Australian Senate Ungrouped Independent ~ Teresa van Lieshout

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.

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Western Australian Senate Group M ~ Mutual Party

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…

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Western Australia Senate Group I ~ Voluntary Euthanasia Party

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.

~~~~~~~~

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.

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Western Australian Senate Group H ~ Freedom and Prosperity Party

Freedom and Prosperity.  We all love those, don’t we?  How could any rational person ever vote against such magnificent things as freedom and prosperity?

OK, I’m sorry, but I just *cannot* read a party name like that without being possessed with a spirit of cynicism.  And when I click through to their page and discover that the Freedom and Prosperity Party are apparently the re-named Climate Sceptics Party, well, I’m not sure that there’s much more to say.  Except, hooray, I don’t have to write about these idiots after all.

Which, in some ways, is rather a pity, because their tag line now reads “The Australian Climate Sceptics – Exposing the flaws in the greatest hoax inflicted on the human race.”

This is an invitation to sarcasm if ever I heard one.

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Western Australian Senate Group C: Russell Woolf and Verity James

It’s their ABC.  And our ABC.  And so it should be.  Russell Woolf and Verity James are Australian radio and TV personalities who are concerned that the ABC is under attack from the current government and have therefore joined forces to see if they can get it some representation in Canberra.  So far, so good.

Their Group Voting ticket seems to be skewed towards all the tiny parties I’ve never heard of, making it difficult to analyse at a glance!  They give their first few spots to the Voluntary Euthanasia Party, the Sports Party and the Australian Motoring Enthusiasts Party, before funnelling their vote to Labor in the person of Louise Pratt.  (My Oma always did say that the ABC were a bunch of Reds…).  The Greens get next billing, for whatever good that is likely to do them, and then we get two carefully selected Liberals, David Johnston and Michaela Cash, but not the other two.  Their ticket then meanders through a number of smallish, vaguely libertarian parties, though it does avoid the more loopy ones as well as all the religious ones.  The bottom of their ticket is held, interestingly, by Family First, The Australian Voice and the Liberal Democrats, as well as the dodgily-named Freedom and Prosperity Party and Stop the Greens.  The Socialists, incidentally, are at 50 and 51 out of 77, so my Oma wasn’t 100% right about the ABC’s coloration.

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