Only two hours to Abu Dhabi, and we are flying with Baghdad to our right and Tehran to our left. Which means that it is time to look at Peter John Hawks, who is ‘echoing the concerns of the silent majority’.
I don’t know about you, but in my experience the ‘silent majority’ is never very silent, and I’m not at all convinced it is the majority. But there you have it. I am the Red Under the Bed, so what would I know?
Mr Hawks wants us to know that he is a successful business and family man, a life member of Apex Australia who gives to the community, a Financial Planner, and ‘a passionate and patriotic Australian’.
Something tells me that we are not going to get along.
Ooh, yes, here we go. Policy number one is to get rid of Safe Schools – ‘children need to be taught reading, writing and arithmetic, not gender issues’. He also wants to ‘uphold our Christian and family values’. Who is ‘our’ in this sentence?
He is against ‘social engineering’ from the ‘extreme left’, and wants total freedom of speech, including repealing 18c. I’m pretty sure this is the law about racial vilification, but I’m on a plane, I’ll check this when I land.
Yep. It is.
Mr Hawks seems to be rather big on personal responsibility – doesn’t like ‘money fixes’ for education and health, but wants to create more paperwork, sorry, more accountability for administrators and teachers, and wants to encourage people to provide for themselves. He also wants lower taxes and to keep negative gearing, and there is a decided feeling of trickle-down-economics about all of this.
Like everyone, he supports small business. And farmers. And he wants to bring water south, but stops short of the underground pipeline from Queensland idea, which is a pity, because I think if you are going to start with this one, you should go big or go home. (My personal preference would be for a giant waterslide tunnel from Queensland to Victoria. This would also act as a tourist attraction, and an alternative to high speed rail!) He also doesn’t trust our judicial system, but I read this as more Derryn Hinch than Men’s Rights.
Also, apparently, we should look after our volunteer firefighters. No argument on that one.
On the whole, way too right-wing for my liking, and in a rather narrow, Christian, personal responsibility-without-mercy sort of way.
I won’t be voting for Mr Hawks. I’ll be too busy socially engineering things from the left. Or possibly doing health-related paperwork if medical research funding gets cut.
