*Awooga - ranty post*
I’ve had a few days to get over the federal election now. I dried my tears on Saturday night and realised that I was one of these people who really thought that things were going to change, but the time wasn’t right. The election campaign should have started months before, possibly years before, and that we now have 3 years to campaign, and outline the future of Australia once the conservative regime passes into infamy.
Expect bad things to come out of having a Senate ruled by one party. It happened in WA when they shut down debate about industrial relations policies. The result being there are less full time jobs available for workers and greater numbers of casual employees.
It doesn’t matter which govt is in the lower house, Liberal or Labor, the point of the Senate is to be a house of review - not a rubber stamp. Too much power corrupts and leads to bad decisions being made about alot of things, on both sides of the fence. Even if I do support the labor party, they are still too right wing, even for me. Probably why I have never signed up to join them.
Some legislation being held up by the Federal Senate are ones which can affect our basic human rights. Security legislation, based on new powers devised by the Fed Govt to give and increase the powers of ASIO to detain, arrest and investigate those suspected of terrorism - right now, anyone with a Muslim sounding name would be suspect, perhaps racial profiling would dictate who is accepted for different jobs in our country, doesn’t matter for example if you’re 3rd Gen Aussie, your great grandparents were from Saudi Arabia, You can’t apply for this job.
The FTA with the US could result in a reduction the funding to the pharmaceutical benefits scheme which provides low cost prescription medicine to those with low incomes or with high needs - lets see this doesn’t just focus on those who are on the dole, but old people on pensions, people on disability pensions, or people who work, and who need cancer treatment or some kind of disease management medicine which might cost $500 per month if it wasn’t on the PBS.
Unfair dismissal laws, whilst probably in need of some tweaking, ultimately could erode the rights of workers, if the tweaking goes too far in the other direction. If they have no say in the way they are being treated at a workplace and object, they could be bullied and then fired. They wouldn’t be able to appeal that. This is one place unions do protect the workers from the employers, because believe it or not, there are still unscrupulous companies who would screw as much as they could their employees if it meant it would get greater profits for the lucky few at the top.
I had a look at the green’s website last night, and found an interesting graph showing that the highest interest rates ever experienced in Australia were during the Fraser years. That they came down during Hawke/Keating years and continued the downward trend whilst Howard has been in power. Globally speaking economists expect a downward trend in the world economy, and with the riding price of oil, and the fact that Howard is going to be increasing spending over the next 3 yrs with a massive surplus (do i need to point out how many people suffered for Howard to get this surplus?) Cuts in funding to research facilities, universities, medicare.. anyways - All that spending will only increase interest rates ultimately - Something Labor is accused of, and lets also look at this reasearch paper which shows that high budget surpluses coupled with increased personal debt from consumers can lead to.. unemployment!! amazing stuff really.
Three years to go. Countdown has begun. Does anyone have a lil Javascript counter that I can stick up on the site to show a countdown till we get a new non-neo-conservative government.