Bad place to live in... if you aren't rich

Recently I have joined up with the Labour Coalition Party. The spelling of this, “labour” as opposed to “Labor”, is the meaning of “work”. And for me, personally.

On the Dictionary website I read that “labour” is a very old spelling in Australia, meaning “the body of persons engaged in such activity, especially those working for wages” and “physical or mental work, especially of a hard or fatiguing kind; toil” (of course, I haven’t mentioned the pregnancy labour!) The word came from Middle English, Middle French and Latin between 1250 and 1300.

Apparently there was an American Labor party which influenced Australian spelling in 1912 – before then they had spelt it correctly. Why change it?

Earlier, before the 2013 election, I supported ALP and Julie Gillard. At work, on my manager’s computer screen, I had glimpses of some extremely upsetting emails with pictures in them, some of them calling Gillard “Juliar”, suggesting the voters “ditch the witch”. I tried to complain about that but that was never acknowledged by my manager. Gillard knew what Abbott was saying, and responded to him in her anti-misogyny speech. She should have been able to stay in government, but Rudd couldn’t accept her and charged in to take over… and lost the election.

Why? Because the “labour” wasn’t seen as part of them. If “labour” is “the body of persons engaged in such activity, especially those working for wages”, why wouldn’t every worker in this country vote for Labor? Perhaps, because the Labor party changed their name after the American spelling back in 1912, more than 100 years ago, workers began to think that this party wasn’t really for them.

There is now a Facebook page set up as Mad Fucking Witches which was “Inspired by Peter Dutton

calling a journalist a ‘Mad Fucking Witch’. Big mistake - we're the grand-daughters of the witches you weren't able to burn.” Very good activity, but why wasn’t something like this set up when we were told that LNP would “ditch the witch”? MFW has grown to nearly 10,000 supporters – I hope they win just what they want – the misogynist men in LNP voted out.

For me, Australia has changed in the last 3 years, becoming a bad place to live in if you aren’t rich. Those medium-income people who have their own large mortgage will vote LNP because they like Malcolm Turnbull, the latest LNP Prime Minister. Why? Because Turnbull is friendly? Doesn’t rave as much as Abbott? Perhaps these people need to become aware of just what Turnbull has done – like the worst people he’s appointed, such as Morrison as Treasurer - replaced Hockey, Dutton as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection - took over from Morrison. (When Abbott had won in 2013 there were only 5 women in Cabinet. Turnbull doubled that to 10. Still only 25%.)

LNP has enacted some extremely bad policies, which is why my hairs are up.

• Moving young people with DSP onto unemployment (Newstart) – this move gives no thought to why people on DSP still want to work, but when they are moved they lose some of their income before they can even start work. They are simply called “bludgers”, even though they might still have a raft of medical costs which they can’t meet on Newstart.

• Cutting the income tax – except that LNP doesn’t even think that cutting this will upset the budget. In fact, even the tax cut will be expanded to business – many of which still don’t even pay tax. These ones should be called “bludgers”. This government hasn’t given any real thought about how the lower income will still pay Newstart to people who have lost their jobs after ChAFTA or TPPA which has employed their own people on 457.

• Negative gearing has worked only in the advance of wealthy people. Some of those have a lot of
  
  rental properties on their books yet they earn their income from something other than their rentals, and pay less tax on what they are earning because of negative gearing. Too many lower-income Australians can’t even afford their first home, let alone buy investments. The Tax Institute provided a workout of how much more tax the investors would pay on their income “they earn from employment” of $220,000. That sort of income is unbelievable – only people who earn that much income can afford investment properties? So why do they pay less tax because of negative gearing? Whilst the reversal of negative gearing has been put forward by Labor, it’s been picked up by LNP. Unfortunately too many of the wealthy disagree with this. So why won’t LNP increase the income limit when tax is paid by low income earners, as well as increasing the tax on high income earners, whether or not they have negative gearing?

• LGBTI marriage is still on the back-bench. Marriage is a widely recognised legal relationship. There are no real reasons why this is not just agreed with for LGBTI people, but LGBTI people who have lived with their partner for years and have lived with a disagreement with their and/or their partner’s family – who might even be “ex” – can quite possibly walk out with nothing. Australian Marriage Equality says: “Rarely do opponents of marriage equality explain how marriage is diminished by equality. We can only assume they mean that same-sex relationships are worth less than their opposite-sex counterparts and that to equate the two somehow symbolically degrades the latter.” So far there seems to be a majority of support, but the government still hasn’t introduced it.

• Cutting a person out of their residential visa because they have more than 12 months gaol is extremely wrong. This government kicked a man aged 43, who lived in Australia and committed his crime in Australia, back to New Zealand. There is no reason that NZ will have any reason to trust them. But there are still a lot of “criminals” who have lived for many years in Australia and have only very small criminal records which have added up to more than 12 months. One woman, threatened deportation from Australia back to Christchurch, also age 43, has lived in Australia for 27 years and recently only served just over 12 months. She doesn’t remember NZ, and, in my opinion, within 27 years Australia would have taught her how to do her crime. She couldn’t even live in NZ with her own children, who were all born in Australia.

• Refugees. These people have been a huge problem for Australia for many years. In relation to a ship, Tampa, in 2001 John Howard said "we [LNP] decide who comes into this country and the circumstances in which they come." The refugees on board Tampa ended up at Nauru. This camp had been set up by LNP, not Labor. Today Labor is blamed for setting up the offshore refugee policies, and far too many people just take this as gospel. While I certainly don’t believe the lies that LNP people spout, I am disappointed that Labor never seems to talk about how they felt back in 2001. Howard was also at fault for so many deaths on SIEV X 19 October 2001, when 353 refugees , including 142 women and 146 children, were drowned. There is a memorial outside of Canberra city which was set up further away from Canberra because Howard didn’t want to see it. Go and visit it.

I could go on, but I feel depressed just thinking about these ones and how LNP and Labor just don’t change this country for the best, rather than how they think it will work for the wealthy.

 

On Australia Day this year I took on citizenship. I am now supporting TLC the Labour Coalition Party, because I think their belief – and their spelling – is far ahead of either the two “major parties. 

Join us – it’s the end of this tragedy and a new day!