Selwyn Johnston… Independent Advocate

I am appalled that incumbent politicians are willing to vote themselves a 6.7% wage increase, a rise representing over twice the official rate of inflation.

I hereby pledge that, when elected, I will donate the current 6.7% wage rise, and any future wage rises, to the Committee for Oncology Unit at Cairns Hospital (COUCH) during my tenure of office.

This is a genuine commitment to the voters of Leichhardt.

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Australians will get an “Australia Card” whether they like it or not. Labor State Transport Minister Paul Lucas has announced that he will make available to the Liberal Federal Government access to the new hi-tech Queensland drivers licence.

Such collusion between the major parties and acting to thwart the majority consensus in Australia does not bode well for the future of this country. What it means is that the two major parties are ideologically exactly the same, and, disturbingly, are prepared to act knowingly and contrary to the will of the people.

As both State and Federal agencies will be eligible to access information from the combined system then clearly any element of privacy is non-existent. Similarly with no realistic restrain on the type and detail of data included on the card it is reasonable to believe that the sky’s the limit.

The more worrying aspect is that as the major parties do not act according to the wishes of the people… exactly who do they represent?

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VOTERS should be appalled by the knowledge that the Federal Government, even after announcing massive budget surpluses from excessive taxation, is unwilling to fund pensions at an adequate level to ensure proper health care to the aged, disabled and ADF veterans.

Certainly reveals a sad indictment on the morality of our elected representatives particularly when their parliamentary lurks, perks and other benefits of office are used as legitimate comparisons.

Unless the federal government urgently addresses Australia’s acknowledged aging population crisis by allocating sufficient taxpayer funds for infrastructure to cope with the increasing demand for aged care facilities, our hospitals will continue to lose in excess of 15% of available beds as a result.

Hospital bed losses compound an already inexcusable antiquated health system with the sick and terminally ill being left unattended in hospital corridors due to abysmal staffing levels caused by a lack of taxpayer funds.

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Many years ago the then Federal Government attempted to introduce a concept called Option 3, which was a form of a Goods and Services Tax. The time wasn’t right apparently for its immediate introduction and we all remember the following fiasco when John Hewson made the matter an election referendum instead of a policy, naturally he lost.

Then along came John Howard who uttered those memorable words, ‘… there will never ever be a GST’, then subsequently went on to introduce a 10% GST, with the connivance of the Australian Democrats.

Part of the promise made to the public at the time was that the States would get the GST in lieu of their then present taxes and stamp duties, which were seen to be negative forces on the economy and were to be reduced and ultimately eliminated. It therefore comes as something of a shock to hear that Ms Anna Bligh, Queensland’s Premier-in-waiting, is increasing the stamp duty on the sale price of motor vehicles. Incidentally the increase falls heaviest on Australian made vehicles, which in most cases are as fuel efficient as many of the four cylinder counterparts.

And the increase is NOT to fund better roads, but mental health services. Now mental health services is a field desperately in need of funding if not in fact total reorganisation. What we have to remember is that for the last 20 years our State Government has totally ignored the mental health problem and it appears that the proposed method of improvement will simply be more of the same.

For those last 20 years the burden of the failure to properly manage mental health problems in our community has fallen largely [and increasingly] on our Police Service. As managers of last resort they have done a good job, certainly the best that could be expected but we can only hope now that the real mental health managers will get some assistance, and funding, and that the Police Service can be given some long overdue relief.

Taxpayers must remember that any improvement will be funded by a tax we were not supposed to have. By now we have become desensitised to election promises and only hope that we get any sort of positive result from the additional tax burden.

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