Sir ScotchMistery July 7, 2014 at 6:31 pm

Ladies and gentlemen, enough.

We sit behind our keyboards and our smart phones (Tony doesn’t have one, not sure if anyone has ever noticed, He just has a Nokia that takes emails and little else), complaining 24/7 about the man currently sitting in the seat which in the Australian Parliament is normally reserved for the Prime Minister. Sort of a seat-warmer if you will, until a proper person returns to fill it.

The question is WHO, WHEN and WHY WAIT for a proper person?

It is firstly, more than obvious, that enough folk are fed up, among those who voted against ALP, as well (following the budget), among those who actually voted LNP, including a lot of people who have auto-voted LNP for so long they have done it accidentally at times because they couldn’t help themselves.

Secondly, March in March, March in May and BusttheBudget have had people on the streets who would never have marched in their lives before this. Suddenly, it is actually getting home to people that we are all in the firing line, except for the politicians, on both sides of the dispatch box.

Now even Fairfax, one of the guilty partners in the election, are looking askance, and the so-called journalists – the fourth column of the “democracy” are realising that if they don’t pick up their game, they will be gone by the time Tony gets shafted. Even before he is gone, we as a population will have so little respect for his government, that they will be the reason we don’t get another LNP government for the next 15 years.

There needs to be a point where enough of us are so angry, we say “ENOUGH” and we say it so many times that it tickles a nerve in so many more of us that we unite in our opposition, and we accept that neither the ALP nor the LNP actually represent the “who” of us as Australians.

We are the original country of the “fair go”. We reckon everyone deserves to have a decent life, everyone should be able to earn a living, feed their kids and have enough money to go away for a week once a year.

But are we that group? Are we the people of a fair go that sends Tamil refugees off, illegally, irrespective of the International undertakings we have made as a country by ratifying the UNHCR treaties, and irrespective of the issues raised under the rule of non-refoulement, which is a crime – managed in the jurisdiction of the International criminal Court in the Hague? How can we actually be sure that as a country there are more of us who agree with the position taken by Scott Morrison and his colleagues, then who don’t agree?

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter a tinkers cuss how many of us wring our hands and shout out in opposition to the position taken on our behalf by our so-called “elected” leaders. It is only when we get active, march in the streets, hassle our local representatives and members, talk to our neighbours and friends about why they do support the position taken on our behalf by the government. How do we as concerned citizens of a once great nation make our voices heard in Canberra to appoint where they can no longer ignore the reality which seems to me to be that more people care than don’t?

So what’s the answer? In essence, both Bill Shorten and Tony Abbott believe that we as a nation despise Muslims enough, that we do not want them to cross our beaches. They are supported in this view by Alan Jones, Andrew Bolt, half a dozen other shock jocks and Ltd “news” papers. They have a smattering of support in Fairfax, but people who think, don’t appear too convinced.

What we need as a community is to come together in groups based on our electorates, and find our common positions. Positions based on our view of labour/corporate relations, our view on foreign companies and mining, our view on the rich/poor divide at both a digital and financial level, our view on taxation law at both the corporate and personal level.

We need a common position on education not only on what our children are taught, by whom and at what cost, but also at a level of funding-should we all fund all schools at the same amount on a per student basis or should one group of students be treated differently? We need to look for a common position on university funding, including taking into account that “for profit” educational entities are a choice for many because they can afford it but are out of reach to the majority.

We need to make our representatives accountable for their actions today but they need to be aware that those actions could be called into question in the future, and we need to have a common position on whether the foibles of the government of the day are to be resolved by the governments of tomorrow.

We need to ensure our representatives do not go to the polls on a pack of lies, or if they do those lies must come back to haunt them at some stage, thus making the easy path to not tell lies in the first place.

We need to be able to rely on our representatives to faithfully present our views in Parliament and vote according to the views we voters express to them. We need to make the parliament set in such a way that we voters are able to examine bills before they are voted on by the house, and in a perfect world we would expect to be able to stop such bills being voted on at all.

We need to be able to choose our own representatives and not have party selections foisted upon us, or parachuted into our electorates in repayment for work done by the representative.

We need to rethink what our democracy is. Is our democracy based on what’s written in limited news? Should our democracy be guided by an 84-year-old American who thinks so little of his mother’s country that he changed his citizenship to enable him to have a greater say in another country’s politics? Should the views we hold as voters, as elector laws, as citizens, as human beings be driven by a narcissistic Sydney based radio announcer or a Melbourne-based commentator on a second rate television channel?

Should our elected leader and his chief of staff give more credence or value to the views expressed by an American than those expressed by more than half of the Australian population? Should our political representatives be held accountable for their friendships, their relationships or their choice of companion? Should a woman’s decision not to have children affect her ability to lead our country? Should a man be able to comment on that decision and not be held accountable?

All these questions and so few answers for the moment. How many people are prepared to add their voice to a voice for Australia, so that we can all be heard; conservatives, progressives, independents, in fact every shape of political view has a right to be heard in terms of what THEY think. Not what the shock jocks think it is best for them to think. We need to be able to make our own decisions about the politics that we listen to rather than have them fed to us in tiny little spoons so that we don’t overdo our eight second span of attention, commonly referred to as the 6 o’clock news.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are better than that. We have had a perfectly good country for over 200 years and even if it was put together in its current form by British prisoners, we need to not only believe in but work towards the rights of the first people and include them in our discussions as important members of our society.

For my part I will continue to sing this song from every rooftop where I can find a perch. I will constantly repeat it in these pages and wherever else I can get people to listen. We are not the country Tony Abbott and is Christian mate Scott Morrison say we are. We are so much better than that. We are so much better than them.

Paul Keating in one of many moments of brilliance opined that the Senate were “unrepresentative swill”. With the likes of Muir and Palmer driving seats in the Senate that is so much more true today than it was then. Problematically, it now applies to the lower house as well.