Selwyn Johnston… Independent Advocate

What a relief the policy (promises) launch speeches for the Liberals and Labor, and both from Brisbane, are finally over. It’s questionable that anyone is listening any more and for what it is worth the polls has Labor winning hands down. From these polls John Howard’s claim to be underdog is probably likely while Kevin Rudd’s claim that he has yet to succeed in climbing K2 or Mt. Everest has just a little less likelihood. In short both are claiming underdog status.

The election campaign so far has consisted of nothing more than a “me too” debate. One announces a policy and the other matches it. The only real interest has come from Peter Garrett who has stated words to the effect that Labor ‘promises’ are just that, ‘promises’ and that it will be quite a different story when they get there.

Mark Latham suggests that Kevin Rudd will have less chance of standing up for Australians than John Howard, and will be just a weaker version of conservative. Just to balance the equation John Howard and his team have swung from promoting the strong growing economy to advising caution on what could be an ever more unstable economic situation in the near future.

And so it goes on.

In Leichhardt, the Liberals have promised $52 million for a Dental Hospital at the James Cook University Cairns Campus and, Labor have matched it. The same for highways, hospitals and, just about anything else the major parties are jostling to ‘buy’ votes from.

But what guarantee does the public have that any of these ‘promises’ will be implemented. Once either of the major parties is elected they will claim the “mandate” [a very obscure word right now] and will go their merry way a la Peter Garrett style and well, as for the public, too bad. You will be treated to a similar fiasco in another three years.

There is of course one thing you could do. You could Vote 1 for Selwyn Johnston. By giving your primary vote to Selwyn you will be guaranteed that whoever gains the balance of power will not be allowed to forget what they have promised.

Click here for MORE… LEICHHARDT - ‘HOW to VOTE’ - INFORMATION

……………………………………………………………………………………

To send your comment on this viewpoint, simply click onto NO/COMMENTS>> at the top right corner of this post…

With Queensland being a pivotal State for the forthcoming Federal Election it’s no surprise that both the Liberal and Labor parties are working the State over, with each party trying to outdo the other’s ‘promises’.

Two examples for the Leichhardt electorate were firstly the walk for the benefit of cancer treatment facilities at the Cairns Base Hospital. The fight for basic funding for the cancer treatment facilities has been going on for years with, to date, the public being the greatest financial contributors. The nominated candidates of both parties, dressed in their party livery, participated in the walk together with an entourage similarly attired.

Prior to the commencement of the walk the sitting member, on behalf of the liberal’s new candidate, announced an $8.3 million funding for the Cairns Base Hospital facility. Now while any contribution to these badly needed improvements are most welcome, it’s no wonder the public become a little cynical when a stunt like this is pulled. Unquestionably, it was a rare transparent act, so much so that the public could see right through it.

The second example of election largesse was the announcement by Minister for Transport, Mark Vaile, that two (2) billion ($2,000,000,000) would be expended to mitigate flooding and improve safety on the Bruce Highway between Cairns and Sarina, with some $800 million to upgrade the Cairns/Townsville ‘goat track’.

Mr Vaile said, “In the budget this year we allocated a total envelope of $22.3 billion to land transport infrastructure”.

“What we will be announcing for the Bruce Highway in Queensland today will be new funding out of that envelope of money.”

Precisely what that means is open to interpretation but clearly again we are most grateful for the money even though he admits the money has already been flagged in this year’s budget allocations and the “new money” tag might be a little presumptuous if not an outright lie.

However, the questions that this does raise are firstly, just how genuine is the government with these offers, being as it seems at least for the roads, money is already allocated, and secondly, what does it say about the quality of Leichhardt representation over the last eleven (11) years.

And just how genuine will they be over the next three years given that most of this funding will not be available until 2009… at the earliest!

…………………………………………………………………. 

To send your comment on this viewpoint, simply click onto NO/COMMENTS>> at the top right corner of this post…

The Federal election is now getting close and it’s probably time to have a look at some of the former pre election issues and inducements that were before the public at those times. It always pays to have a bit of history.

1996 is the place to start, as that’s the year John Howard first induced the public of Australia to put their trust in him. Looking back the biggest inducement was NO GST, definitely NO GST. So how did we finished up with a GST introduced by the Howard Government immediately after his election. Clearly in retrospect the GST planning had been on the board for years and the exemption on fresh food was the justifying concession.

In 2001 things were getting decidedly dicey for the coalition. Unrest was rife. There was a lot of concern within the public mind over GST implementation, the world economy was very uncertain, there was the question of illegal immigrants and what to do with them and the polls were bleak. At the end of the day it was the illegal immigrant issue that came to a head at the critical time.

This issue of the boat people crystallised the election for the Howard Government when a modern day Viking sailed into Australian history in his good ship the “MV Tampa” and the Australian Customs Service employed novel methods for disembarking children from sinking vessels.

The Howard Government moved to capitalise on these events. The SAS and the RAN were called in to deal with the errant Viking and the matter of the “Children Overboard” was simply lied about. The swift and efficient operations of our defence forces were applauded by the vast majority of people and were quickly claimed by the Coalition. The children overboard episode was denied till after the election when lo and behold the truth came out.

Then in 2004 along came the Australian-American Free Trade Agreement. In the long term this will be the most destructive action taken by an Australian Government against the interests of its own people. Like the ‘Children Overboard’ matter it will simply be lied about, but in this case, by the time all the chickens came home to roost it was too late.

For all these reasons, it’s time that you voted… “Independent”.

……………………………………………………………………….. 

To send your comment on this viewpoint, simply click onto NO/COMMENTS>> at the top right corner of this post…